


when the chips are down

by brideofquiet



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (briefly!), (so briefly! but it happens!), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Steve Rogers, Avengers but Criminals, Crime, Exes, Exes to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Getting Back Together, Heist, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, White Collar Crime, did i mention there's crime!, sloooowly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-17 06:34:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 52,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16090049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideofquiet/pseuds/brideofquiet
Summary: “Steve, Christ, it’s just a small thing, okay? You don’t need to worry about me.”“What if you end up back in prison?”“I’m not gonna—”“Well, how do you know that? Just tell me, or I’m gonna think you’re in with the fucking mafia or something.”“Jesus, it’s not themafia.”“Gang. Drug cartel.”“Oh, lay off! I’m fine, Steve, I’m not in a gang and I’m not going to end up in prison again. Please just calm down.”“How do you know?”Bucky exhales violently. His voice comes strained and halting through the phone. “Because—because I’m working for the guy who put me there last time.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A big THANK YOU to my two wonderful artists, [KazablanKa](http://kazablanka96.tumblr.com/) and [gassada](http://gassadaarts.tumblr.com/), for the art and the enthusiasm! You'll find their beautiful work embedded in several chapters.
> 
> Another thank you to [newsbypostcard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard) for the beta, as always. There's a joke somewhere in here about partners in crime, but I'm gonna save us all and not make it.
> 
> Don't do crime, kids!

The club is dark and quiet, save for some throaty jazz singer warbling from a stage along the back. A burst of laughter and a few terse words are all that rise above the room’s low baseline of indistinct chatter. The patrons here are focused on their gambles, perched around felt-lined tables with their top-shelf liquor in lowball glasses.

Steve sips his bourbon, taps his fingers against the bartop, and tries to remember why he’d bothered coming out here tonight. He doesn’t gamble anymore—not like this, not in any way that’s regulated by the state of New York. So why, then, had he dragged himself all the way into Manhattan? What was the point in combing his hair if he just planned on sitting at the bar all night like some lonely bastard?

He is a lonely bastard, but that’s beside the point.

For the life of him, he can’t remember what came over him. A well-pressed man had mentioned the name of his favorite private club to Steve while perusing the gallery where Steve works. And now here he is, as if he was in a movie, cut from one scene to the next uninterrupted.

The bourbon is good, at any rate, and worth staying just to finish his glass. From his seat, he watches in the long mirror behind the bar. Cards shuffle; chips fall; men and women shift in their seats as surreptitiously as possible. The stakes here are high—much higher than Steve can afford to buy into these days. In truth he couldn’t justify the entrance fee.

He wonders if he stands out, if everyone in here can smell it on him; if they can smell anything beyond the cloying scent of pipe tobacco and expensive perfume—both of which are starting to give his lungs trouble. He ought not to have come at all. He’ll finish his bourbon and get the hell out of here, back to his one-bedroom and his favorite pajamas with the hole in the knee that he’s had since high school. 

“Hit me,” a voice says. One of dozens to say the same thing.

Steve’s eyes flash to the mirror, searching. He’s probably making things up again. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. His heart’s leaping, but it’s ridiculous. Ridiculous, because the voice he thought he heard belongs to a man who’s still in prison.

He doesn’t find him, in the mirror. Steve tosses back the rest of his drink and tabs out. Palming his pocket for wallet and phone, he makes for the door. Stupid, to have come here. No reason for it at all, save making himself feel that much worse on a Wednesday night. 

The jazz band begins a new song, something familiar. Steve pauses by coat check, trying to place it before he leaves. He’s never been good with song titles, but he thinks this LP is in an old box of his.  _ These foolish things remind me of you.  _ He could almost laugh.

When he glances across the room toward the band, Steve spots him. 

_ Hit me. _

He stares, hard, as if seeing some mirage—an illusion in the middle of the desert, temptation and trick. He would hardly notice if someone actually did hit him.

It’s not goddamn possible.

Maybe it is. It’s not as if they’ve been speaking regularly.

“Sir?” the woman at the coat check says.

“I just have to—give me a minute,” Steve says, hardly looking her way before he tears across the room. He’s drawing eyes, making too much fuss walking with this much purpose. It doesn’t matter; he only cares about the reaction of one person in this room.

The seats at the blackjack table are all full. Steve elbows his way to the edge anyway, earning himself a scowl from a woman dripping in mink.

There he is, seated in the middle. He has one hand resting on the table, the other tucked carefully into his lap. His hair has grown out, like he’s thinking of letting it go long again. A pair of sunglasses obscures his face—smart, given the card playing, but infuriating for Steve, who can’t even tell if Bucky is looking at him. 

Despite the sunglasses, Steve knows it’s him. It doesn’t make any sense, but—Occam’s razor. Who the hell else could it be? 

The dealer clears his throat. “Excuse me, sir, this table is—”

Steve grips the edge of the table. “Bucky?”

“Sir, this table is full.”

“I’m not playing,” Steve says. “Bucky. I know that’s you.”

He sees it when Bucky looks at him—not his eyes, just a slight turn of his head, before he tucks his chin again to focus on his cards.

“Mr. Breckinridge, is this man bothering you?” the dealer asks.

“No,” Bucky says, low. Warning. “He was just leaving.”

“Buck, I’m not just gonna—”

“Stop it.” Bucky tips his sunglasses down just low enough for Steve to meet the flat steel of his eyes. “Go home.”

“Not until you tell me why you’re  _ here.”  _ He gestures gracelessly to the room, but he means to indicate more than that. What the hell is he doing  _ out? _

Holding an apologetic hand up to the dealer, Bucky turns more fully toward Steve. By now the other players at the table are at rapt attention, not even pretending to be interested in anything else. Steve doesn’t care; let them smell it on the both of them. A crowd watching should make Bucky behave sensibly. 

Bucky removes his sunglasses and lays them on the table. His jaw is set, like he’s mad, but it’s Steve who has the right to be furious here.

“If I want to talk to you, Steve,” Bucky says slowly, “then I’ll call you. Now stop interrupting, get your coat, and go home.”

Steve plants his feet. “Were you planning on calling? At all?” 

“Christ,” Bucky mutters, shifting in his seat. “If I promise to call you, will you leave?”

“Seems I’ll need that promise in writing.”

Bucky’s mouth sours. Steve raises an eyebrow, point made.

“Mr. Breckinridge, would you like me to notify security?”

“Jesus, fucking—no,” he ends firmly. “Don’t cause a scene, Steve. Go home. I’ll call you when I have time.”

Steve takes a slow breath and furtively glances around the room. Every single face seems to be turned toward them now. He’s already caused a scene; he may as well keeping causing it.

“I mean it, okay?” Bucky says, and something in his face softens. It’s in the set of his mouth, Steve thinks; his eyes are still hard, but the corners of his lips waver and wobble just that slightest bit. If anything had the power to placate Steve—well, it’s that. He can feel the fight draining out of him like a plug pulled. 

“You promise?” Steve asks.

“I promise,” Bucky says. “Now please, get out of here.”

It’s enough to convince him. Steve deflates all at once, backing down. Palms up, he casts a look at the dealer, who has one hand curled quite deliberately under the edge of the table. Steve’s certain the dealer has his fingers poised over a panic button. But there’s no need for panic—he’ll leave now. No panicking.

He looks to Bucky, just one more time. Bucky nods at him and jerks a thumb toward the door.

“I’ll be waiting,” Steve says, then turns to go. The low, percussive sounds of the room slowly pick up tempo again as he strides toward the door.

He forgets his coat on the way out.

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

His hands itch the whole train ride home, some old nervous tic he never understood. Staring hard at the speckled floor of the car, he rubs his palms over his knees again and again. The fabric of his slacks is too smooth to alleviate the tingling apprehension. As it persists, so does the strangled feeling in his chest that keeps him from breathing.

Psychosomatic. He knows what a real asthma attack feels like, though it’s been years. He’s fine, physically. It’s just his head that’s a mess. 

This is a long damn train ride.

The moment his feet hit the pavement above ground, Steve grabs his phone. Shoving his free hand in a pocket—it’s cold out tonight—he punches in the second number on his speed dial. As it rings back at him, he wonders if number one would even connect anymore, if he tried.

“Sam,” he says when the line connects.

“Not even gonna give a man the chance to say ‘hello’?”

It’s late enough that the streets in Steve’s neighborhood have quieted. There’s hardly a soul out on foot, save for people hurrying home. He jaywalks without thinking about it. “This isn’t a pleasantries kind of conversation.”

“Well, that’s obvious. What’s up?”

“I saw him.”

“You saw—who?”

“Bucky.” Steve’s fingers flex around his phone, uncomfortably tight. “I saw Bucky.”

“Now hang on a second,” Sam says. “Where did you see him?”

“At a goddamn private club in Manhattan, playing cards.” Steve stumbles over a curb so badly that he decides to hell with walking altogether, and just stands there in the middle of the sidewalk. The crosswalk sign blinks at him,  _ ten nine eight. _ “I didn’t even know he’d been released.”

“Are you still there?” Sam asks.

“Where?”

“At this club.”

“No, I’m—I’m on my way home.”

“Okay. Right. You want me to come over?”

“Sam, you don’t have to—”

“Why else would you call, if you didn’t want me to?”

“It just freaked me out.” Steve finally gets his feet under himself, and keeps walking. “Feel like I’ve seen a ghost. I just needed to tell somebody else before I convinced myself that’s all it was.” 

“Look, I got a brand new fifth of whisky,” Sam says. “How’s that sound?”

“Shit.” Steve exhales, ragged. There’s a reason Sam has been on his speed dial for so long; he always knows exactly what Steve needs, before Steve can even figure out what he’s asking for himself, like it’s some kind of sixth sense. “Fuck. That sounds great.”

“I’ll see you in thirty. Don’t fall to pieces before I get there.”

  
  


By the time Sam makes it to Steve’s apartment, Steve has managed to yank both shoes off and untuck his shirt. That’s about all he’s managed to do, but he isn’t lying prone on the living room floor like he wants to, so he counts it as a win. The longer he’s alone with this, the more on edge he feels. By the time Sam makes it, he may wear a hole in the rug along the hall.

The handle of the door rattles. He’d left it unlocked on purpose. Sam lets himself in while Steve makes a beeline to the cabinet for glasses.

“Hey,” Sam says, flat—purposefully absent any pity, more than anything. His face is grim as he offers Steve the whisky. That’s almost worse, somehow. 

Steve swipes the bottle from him and dumps a generous helping into both glasses. He passes one to Sam, then upends his in one gulp. On any other night he might feel bad about downing this liquor so quickly—Sam never skimps—but not this time. He hardly even feels the burn.

“Man,” Sam says as Steve refills his glass. “Not even an ice cube?”

“Nope.”

“Well. Suit yourself.” Sam makes for the freezer, where he finds ice to put in his glass. Steve keeps a steady grip on his second drink and quietly reminds himself that getting drunk isn’t going to help. Allegedly. 

His free hand grips the counter beside him.

“Steve, you should sit down before you get stuck like that.”

“I’m not stuck.”

“Tell that to your face.”

“My—shut it.” Steve runs a hand over his face, scrubbing at his eyes to erase the pinched expression he’d been wearing.

“You look nice, other than your face,” Sam says.

Steve gives him a withering look.

“So what happened, exactly?” Sam asks, leaning a hip against the counter. “Since when do you dress up and go into Manhattan on a weeknight?”

“I don’t,” Steve says. “I don’t know.”

“Look, if you don’t want to talk about it—”

“No.”

“So you do want to talk about it?”

“No,” Steve repeats, then sags backward till his head thunks against the cabinet. The counter’s edge digs into the small of his back. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t fuckin know, Sam.”

“Just walk me through it,” Sam offers. “You were at some private club?”

“Yeah. Someone mentioned it to me at work and I just—just decided to go. Why not, I guess.”

“Can’t drag you out even kicking and screaming these days, but you decide to go somewhere forty minutes away all by yourself? Okay, Steve.”

“Oh, fuck off, this isn’t about you.” Steve rolls his eyes and takes a sip of whisky. This time he actually lets himself taste it. “I just needed to get out of the house.”

Sam, though his mouth is still flat, waves a hand at him. “Fine. So you go to this club.”

“I had one drink and was about to leave, then on my way out, I look over and he’s just—right there. Playing fuckin blackjack in sunglasses like … like he does it all the time.”

“Well, didn’t he used to? He’s good. Why shouldn’t he play?”

“Sam, that’s not the point.”

“Fine, okay. Did he see you?”

“Did he—I marched right over there, of course he saw me.” 

Sam shakes his head, sighing.

“What?” Steve hisses.

“Nothing, Steve, just your methodology. Forget about it. I take it he didn’t react well to seeing you?”

“He barely even—” Steve raises his glass to his lips, but the smell suddenly turns his stomach. He sets it down roughly, sloshing whisky onto the counter. 

He thinks of Bucky’s hair, smoothed back out of his face but with what was obviously a few months’ growth. Regulation demanded he keep it short in prison. 

Steve’s stomach gives another unpleasant roll. “Sam,” he says, strange and thick, “he wouldn’t even look at me. He just told me to leave. He didn’t even ...”

The room is silent for a long minute. When Steve glances up, Sam is staring down into his glass, swirling the contents. The ice clinks faintly against the glass. Sam’s brow is drawn together like he’s deep in thought.

“Sam?”

“When’s the last time you talked to him?” Sam asks without looking up.

“I mean, we would talk on the phone sometimes, but they regulate time pretty strictly and you know how cagey he gets about people listening. Mostly I just wrote him.”

“Last time in person, then.”

“Oh.” Steve swallows. “Two months after his sentencing.”

“So it’s been, what—two years?”

“Thereabouts,” Steve rasps. “Yeah.”

“Steve,” Sam starts, but Steve straightens to his full height before Sam can get another word out.

“Don’t,” Steve says, face darkening.

“I’m just saying, if you haven’t spoken to him properly in two years—”

“It’s not like that. He would’ve said. It wasn’t like that.”

“Well, that’s news to me. I guess I can’t speak for you, but if I hadn’t spoken to someone for that long, I don’t know why I’d be calling them up out of the blue.”

“Out of the blue? Sam, it’s  _ me! _ It wouldn’t have been out of the fucking blue for him to tell me he’d been released from prison early after I was the one who landed him in there in the first place.”

Sam’s glass clatters to the counter, mostly empty. He sets a hand to his forehead. “Fuck, Steve, I’m not talking you back down from that bullshit again.”

“Only because you know it’s true.”

“Alright, okay, so say Barnes does blame you like you think he should. Then does it make sense to you why he wouldn’t call? You say it’s your fault but can’t handle the thought that he might have actually believed you?”

Steve’s eyes screw shut, breathing out so hard it hurts his ribs. Sam’s right; he’s being a hypocrite, but the whole situation still feels like a betrayal somehow.

“Or maybe that’s not it.” Sam’s voice is softer now. “Maybe he has some other reason for lying low for a while. I don’t know, and I’m not gonna speculate about his reasons, but don’t act so wounded, Steve. Maybe it’s not about you at all. He’s the one who only got out of lock-up three months ago.”

“Three—” Steve stares hard at Sam, trying to read him, but his face has fallen curiously blank. “How do you know when he got out?”

“Steve,” Sam says carefully, as if he were about to break bad news to a child.

“No. Don’t use that tone on me. Did he call you?”

Sam points a finger. “You know what? Fuck you, Steve. Bucky’s my friend, too.”

“You see him often?” Steve asks, undeterred.

“Look, I’m gonna say this one time and you can get the hell off my back. He called me once, to tell me he was out. Said he wanted to be left alone awhile, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“Because he asked me specifically not to,” Sam says, and Steve’s heart gives a sickening lurch. “By the way, I don’t appreciate being dragged into the middle of this. You two and your bullshit can go ahead and leave me alone, as far as I’m concerned. You both ask too much of people.”

Steve’s hands come up to cradle his own face. He breathes slowly, willing the pricking at his eyes to go away. He’s spent the better part of two years just as tense. His shoulders are so rigid it hurts and in fact, he can hardly remember what it feels like to properly relax them. He’s been carrying himself worried and waiting and hung out to dry.

It hurts as bad now as it had the day he’d shown up for visiting hours only to find his name had been taken off Bucky’s list. The shock of it stole his breath. He’s never quite been able to find it again since. But he’d never thought that it meant—this. Call it mulish or pigheaded or just plain willfully stupid, but Steve had never considered that Bucky cutting him off like that would be any kind of permanent. He’d just assumed… something. That Bucky, in a fit of stubbornness to rival Steve’s, had decided to handle it alone. 

It was stupid, he sees now. What the hell else could it mean? What did he think would happen when Bucky got out, after all that? That they could just pick up where they left off, the lovers reunited, as if none of it had ever happened? 

If Steve had been paying any attention at all, he would have already known that Bucky wanted nothing to do with him. 

Sam’s not the one he really wants to yell at. In fact, Sam’s about the only person who doesn’t deserve to be yelled at. Steve feels sick to his stomach, a terrible wheeling sensation in the pit of him like he’s just found himself on a rollercoaster he has no hope of escaping. The past two years of his life have been—what, a lie? Wasted? 

“Sorry,” he mutters into the heels of his hands. He drops them and reaches for his whisky again, sniffling.

“What was that now?”

“I’m sorry, Sam.” He means it. Neither one of them should force Sam to pick a side. And there are sides now, apparently. Dammit.

“Yeah. I know you are.” Sam exhales shakily and steps forward again, distance forgotten. “Me too, alright? Me too.”

Later, on the couch with  _ Top Chef _ reruns playing at an inoffensive volume, Sam slings his arm around Steve’s shoulders and pulls him close. Grateful for the contact and the forgiveness, Steve lets his eyes slip heavily closed. He hasn’t been paying attention anyway, so he may as well stop pretending. His empty glass lists in his grip.

“It’s not that I agree with his choice to ice you out like this, you know,” Sam says. “But it’s his choice to make. I have to respect that, even if I think he’s being childish.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes.

“He really didn’t say anything else to you?”

“He said—” Steve’s jaw works. “He promised to call when he had the chance.”

“Oh. Okay, then good. See?”

“You think he actually will?”

“If you really wanna know,” Sam says, his hand comforting and warm at Steve’s shoulder, “I think it was only a matter of time before he called you anyway, whatever his reservations about it. You two never did know how to be apart from each other for very long.”

“He didn’t tell you why he wanted—” Steve can’t manage the rest of the sentence.

“No,” Sam says. “Wouldn’t budge. You know how he is.”

“He likes his secrets.”

“Yeah, but he keeps his word,” Sam says. “If he said he’ll call, then he will.”

“I don’t even know what to say to him.”

Sam sighs softly, like it’s unintentional. This time, Steve does feel the inevitable pity as Sam says, “Now that I can’t help you with.”

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

Steve's head pounds out a percussive torment in time with his alarm clock. He swipes a blind hand and manages to slap it off the nightstand by accident. 

It clatters to the floor with a few indignant bleeps on the way down, then the room falls blessedly quiet again. But he’s awake now, however grudgingly. He had fallen asleep on the couch and can’t really remember making the move to his bed—which would explain the headache. No more whisky for a while; he’s getting too old to wake up like this. The crick in his neck tells him he’s too old for falling asleep on couches, too.

Maybe it’s for the best he doesn’t remember much. He has a tendency to get loose-lipped when he’s been drinking. Sam had probably had to listen to him bitch and babble through too many Food Network shows. Steve owes him something, for that; a fruit basket maybe. 

His stomach turns, but he can’t blame it all on the alcohol. Bucky’s been out for three months. When they were kids, Bucky’s parents would shuffle Bucky and his sisters off to Indiana for most of the summer. Neither one of them had been able to stand it. Steve, surly and alone in Brooklyn, would call him almost daily; Bucky would answer so quick it was like he’d been waiting right there by the phone.

And now—three months free, like it doesn’t even matter, after it’s already been so long. It boils his blood. He aches with questions, both long-winded and inarticulate, and still other more profane.

Almost overpowering the anger is a sense of loss. Steve misses him. He’s missed him for two years now. This, if anything, has only made that worse. 

For all he knows, Bucky hates his guts.

Steve drags a hand over his face to keep himself from staring a hole into the ceiling. He’d lie here all day if he didn’t have to go to work. But he does, and he’d left his phone somewhere in the living room besides. It’s—he flicks his eyes to the clock on the floor—only 7:32 a.m., so it’s unlikely he’s missed any calls, but there might be an email or two. Life churns cruelly on. 

With an almighty groan, he untangles his legs from the sheets and gets out of bed. To call his apartment a one-bedroom is generous. He’d moved, after Bucky had been put away, in some effort to keep himself from getting caught up in the mess. He hadn’t wanted to; he'd liked their place and the rent wasn’t so bad he couldn’t scrape it on his own. Bucky had insisted, though, the same way he’d taken the fall: no room for argument, even from Steve. 

That had been one of their last few conversations, over a laminate table and stale coffee, keeping their voices down. Bucky had kicked him in the shin more than once—all the contact they were allowed, and even that was pushing it.

His apartment is boring, tiny, and the light is terrible. Steve would hardly know it was morning if it weren’t for the clock. Most of their old stuff wouldn’t even fit, so it’s all off in storage. He never bothered to decorate much, assuming it would all be temporary. It’s no wonder Steve had been feeling so claustrophobic lately; he lives in a closet.

That means there aren’t many places to lose things, though. His phone is on the coffee table, next to two dirty glasses. Sam had left sometime after two in the morning, after Steve started nodding off on the couch. Steve ought to call and make sure he made it home safe.

There are no missed calls on his phone. He bites back a noise of frustration, though he knows it’s immature. It’s been less than twelve hours. Bucky doesn’t make promises he doesn’t intend to keep. He fibs when it suited him, sure—he's committed fraud on occasion—but he never did like to lie. Neither does Steve; he can’t remember which of them had learned it from the other. 

To this day, Steve can’t understand why he’d lied so easily during his trial.

_ Sorry for the headache, _ Steve sends to Sam before retreating to the kitchen for coffee and a bowl of corn flakes.  _ Thanks for last night _ .

Work is quiet enough for him to nurse his hangover away in peace, tucked into a back office of the gallery pretending to do paperwork. He deliberately keeps his phone in his bag, though the ringer’s turned on loud. He won’t miss it, if it does go off. 

Would Bucky even still have his number? He hasn’t changed it in years, but if they’d wiped Bucky’s phone somehow or just plain confiscated it for whatever reason... maybe he doesn’t know it. Nevermind that Steve could recite Bucky’s number backward and forward and in three-part harmony—Bucky might not remember his.

Steve holds off on calling that harmonizing number until his lunch break the next day, when a tinny, automated voice tells him that the number’s been disconnected. He nearly throws his phone at the wall. 

It might be for the best, if he did break the thing. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to Bucky either. Maybe he should just put it all out of his head and move on with his life, the way Bucky seems to have done.

He manages to set it aside for the better part of the weekend. Sam forces him out of the apartment, and though he puts up a protest in name only, he’s grateful for something to distract him, even if that something is brunch. They talk about inane bullshit, which Steve welcomes with open arms. He can tell Sam is pointedly avoiding the elephant in the room, and Steve lets him. He eats his crepes; drinks a bloody mary or three. The friends at the table next to theirs get hilariously drunk off mimosas. If only for a few hours, it’s nice to remember that other things exist in the world.

Once or twice, he considers asking Sam for Bucky’s current number. He can’t manage to swallow his pride to actually do it, though.

On Monday his schedule is blessedly full—potential buyers booked for viewings all day. Most of them know what pieces they want already, so it’s an easy morning that propels him toward his sales quota for the month. He hardly remembers to check his phone at all till around noon. He pulls it out of his bag, barely daring to hope for anything.

One missed call. 

His chest is seized by some complicated emotion. Steve nearly drops his phone. He fumbles to hit the redial button, presses the receiver his ear so forcefully it pinches, and listens to it ring. Ring, ring, ring. 

_ I’m sorry, the person you are trying to reach has not set up their voice mailbox. Please call again. _

“Shit,” Steve mutters, and slams the phone down onto his desk. He takes a moment to recompose himself, then wanders back out onto the gallery floor for his next appointment. Maybe it wasn’t Bucky calling; just some telemarketer with a local area code.

The gallery is wide, airy, lit as well as it should be—better than it needs to be, frankly. For somewhere with a decent reputation and a consistent clientele, the work they bring in is pityingly mid-grade. But the work has to be sold, and that’s Steve’s job. Much as most of the art on the walls pains him to look at, he’s not in charge of curation. Maybe, in a few more years, he might be—but that’s more stability than he’s used to hoping for, lately.  He’s grateful to be holding down a job so well to begin with, and his coworkers are nice enough people. He could be doing a hell of a lot worse.

Working here keeps him busy, at any rate, even if it doesn’t leave him much time to focus on his own art these days. At least, that’s the reason he gives himself for having nothing better than cheap drugstore pens in the apartment.

The Cawleys are a fickle couple, Steve learns quickly. They’ll wish and wash all day if he lets them. He might; it’s that or file paperwork the rest of the afternoon.

“I just don’t know,” Flora Cawley says. “What about you, Kent? For the guest extension?”

“The colors are…” Kent waves a hand in the air.

“Oh, I know, dear, but maybe…?”

It’s just some benign landscape of middle America. The Cawleys would be hard-pressed to decorate a room so that a painting like this would look out of place. Steve had thought they seemed the type to want something as innocuous as this, but maybe he was wrong. He could lead them toward the abstract painters, even the sculptors—see what happens.

“How about we look around, see if anything catches your eye?” he offers. Both Cawleys swing their heads around to stare at him, as if they’d forgotten he was there at all. “Maybe we have something else for you.”

“Well,” Flora starts.

“Perhaps,” says Kent.

They trail along after him into another corner of the gallery, where they react just as tepidly. Steve’s nearly ready to send them home to sleep on it, though he knows their chances of coming back are abysmally low. He’d almost rather do the paperwork.

A soft, automated bell chime signals someone coming through the door. Steve, caught up in explaining expressionism to two people incapable of understanding it, hardly registers the noise. But when Flora squints over his shoulder, pushing her glasses up her nose, Steve glances behind him.

A man stands in front of that dreadful landscape, a coat folded neatly over one arm.

Steve’s knees nearly buckle.

“Oh,” Bucky says, glancing his way, “when you have a free moment, I’d like to discuss purchasing this with you.” He waves his free hand toward the painting. A smirk plays at the corner of his mouth, almost undetectable if you’re not perfectly familiar with those lips. Bucky knows what he’s doing.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Steve grinds out. Christ, how to get these people out of here? He’s not above a flyswatter.

“No, no,” Flora says, “we were going to buy that painting.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “Were you?”

“Yes, we were,” Kent insists.

Bucky, who must’ve heard this, strides toward them across the gallery floor. He turns his charming smile on both the Cawleys, then on Steve—who, only by the grace of God, refrains from scowling at him openly. But Bucky can read him too well; he quirks an eyebrow.

“I’ll pay ten percent over the asking price,” Bucky says.

“You don’t even know the asking price,” Steve says. “It isn’t listed.”

“We’ll do twelve percent more,” Kent says.

“Now let’s not start a bidding war here,” Bucky says coolly. His eyes track to Steve’s, but he speaks to the Cawleys: “What makes you want that painting so much, anyway?”

“My mother is from Ohio,” Flora says, all prim. “It reminds me of her, rest her soul. It looks just like her backyard.”

Kent nods in solidarity.

“Well, now,” Bucky says. “In that case—fifteen.”

“Twenty!” Kent says.

“Look, I’m sure we can negotiate something here,” Steve says. Fine—it’s a little fun.

“We’ll give you twenty percent over asking price,” Flora says. She meets Bucky’s eye, goading, but he holds up both gloved hands.

“Can’t beat that,” he says, perfectly regretful. “Suppose I’ll just look around awhile, then.”

He turns and wanders off into the recesses of the gallery, just like that. Steve stares after him, unsure whether to be happy, dumbfounded, or angry. He settles on option D) all of the above, just as Flora Cawley clears her throat insistently.

“Well, do you accept?” she asks.

“Yes,” Steve says, “of course, thank you. Come with me, I’ll just need you to sign a few things.”

He ushers the Cawleys toward the sales office, pausing at the top of the hall to look for Bucky. He spots him planted in front of one of the only pieces in the whole place Steve actually likes looking at. 

“Buck,” Steve says, just loud enough to carry.

Bucky turns toward him, his face indecipherable now. “Go on, Steve. I’m not going anywhere.”

Steve exhales shallowly, then tears his eyes away from him to follow the Cawleys down the hall.


	2. Chapter 2

The Cawleys have been gone for more than five minutes before Steve finds it in himself to move. For all that he’d anticipated this for the past week, his body seems to have rusted over now that it’s minutes away from happening. Fight, flight, or freeze; under most circumstances he prefers the first.

It’s just that, before seeing Bucky that night at the club, he’d had much different ideas about their reunion. He’d meet him at the prison gate with a rental car. They'd hug each other tight for so long they'd both go numb, and even then neither would let go. He would take Bucky to Bucky’s favorite greasy spoon for lunch, and then bring him home and never let him out of his sight again.

That’s all a fantasy now.

What does he say to him? What can he say? Sometime over the weekend, all his anger congealed and left him unable to feel anything other than hurt. He’d rather feel angry. At least that would give him some directive.

There’s a quiet knock at the door. Steve’s head snaps up so fast he’s dimly surprised he doesn’t hear a crack.

Bucky stands in the doorway, still looking unreadable. He raises his arm, the one with the coat folded over it. “You left this,” he says.

Steve blinks. He hadn’t even realized. “Oh.”

“Suppose you might want it back. Cold out there today.”

A shiver runs down Steve’s spine that has nothing to do with the chill. “Yeah.”

“Nice place,” Bucky says, thumbing toward the hall. “You’re moving up in the world.”

“Oh,” Steve says, and frowns. “Right. How did you know—”

“Asked Sam, when you didn’t pick up.”

“Huh.” Steve nods, mouth twisting, till Bucky raises an eyebrow in question. “Right,” Steve repeats, then waves a hand at the room. “Better come in.”

Bucky eases gingerly into the office, like he’s wary of stepping on a squeaky floorboard—or a land mine, maybe. Steve supposes either one might be possible, in a building as old as this, and knowing his own temper.

“Closed-door conversation, do you think?” Bucky says, his hand on the door handle.

Steve stands up abruptly, his desk chair skidding back with a dull shriek.

“That’s what I thought,” Bucky mumbles, and shuts the door behind him. He flicks the lock, too, then crosses to Steve’s desk and lays the coat down on it. There’s nothing to disturb; Steve keeps his space as utilitarian as is acceptable for an art gallery. He has next to no personal effects here. The space is bare like his apartment, each of them suggesting a half-life. He reaches for the coat, his fingers stilling at the edge of the fabric. A few days in Bucky’s care—would it smell like him now?

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Steve says, low.

“They wouldn’t have bit without the push,” Bucky says. He pauses and makes a rough sound in the back of his throat. “Or are we talking about the coat?”

Steve looks up at him. His tongue presses hard to the back of his teeth.

With a strained sigh, Bucky falls into one of the plush armchairs across from Steve’s desk. His hands, folded in his lap, are still gloved. “Or are we talking about something completely different?”

Steve takes his seat, sitting stiffly. With the desk between them, the quiet hum of office life seeping through the thin walls, and the tick of the clock—this almost feels like a business meeting. It’s as if they had arranged a time to discuss when and why their relationship had withered and died on the vine without Steve even noticing. Maybe Bucky had come here to the gallery on purpose, to ensure their discussion retained a suitable level of civility.

Steve puts a hand to his temple and rubs, closing his eyes. “We’re talking about all of it.”

“I was just trying to help,” Bucky says. “But I guess I know how much you hate that.”

“You know what?” Steve begins, harsh, but he doesn’t have a follow up. He doesn’t know what, either.

Bucky raises a cool eyebrow. His calm is infuriating.

“Why are you here?” Steve asks.

“Thought you wanted to talk, Steve.”

“Do _you?”_

“Sure,” Bucky says. “Let’s talk.”

Steve hasn’t a clue where to begin, though. It's as if he were an accountant asked to perform an autopsy. He doesn’t want to cause any more harm, but that seems impossible, given everything. All he’d really like to do is curl under his desk—forget any of it ever happened. Let it all go back to normal, back to before.

But there’s no chance of that, so he may as well be blunt.

“How about you start,” Steve says, hands clenched over his knees, “by telling me why you took me off your visitors list.”

Bucky hums an off note, like he’d expected no less. “Never did pull your punches, huh?”

“I showed up, and they turned me away at the gate.”

“I know.”

“Why’d you take me off? Tell me.”

Bucky sinks further into his seat, glancing at the ceiling. “Look, I’m visiting you now, aren’t I? We don’t need to rehash all that.”

“We never—hashed it—at all. I deserve an answer, Bucky.”

“I still called you now and then, didn’t I?” Bucky’s eyes are somewhere near Steve’s shoulder. “Read your letters and all.”

“You never talked about anything of consequence. You sounded like a telegram. ‘Doing fine, don’t worry, had casserole in the caf today.’”

“Steve.”

“I felt like I was going out of my mind, thinking of you stuck in there. All I wanted was just a scrap, just a sliver of something to make me believe you really were doing alright, but you wouldn’t let me see you and you couldn’t even write me back. Not once.” Steve bends over his lap, and spills the worst of it: “Some days it felt like you’d died.”

Bucky’s still staring at the wall, blinking hard.

“I can handle the truth, Buck,” Steve says. He sits up straighter in his seat, like a churchgoer. “Just tell me in words if I’ve been living in willful ignorance the past two years. If you don’t want to be with me anymore, just say it.”

Bucky’s face darkens with sudden ferocity. “Why is this only about you? Huh?”

“I never said—”

“Jesus Christ, Rogers, that’s been the problem the whole time. I get arrested, but is it about me? No, it’s about how if you’d been there, you could have saved the day. I get sentenced and you say it should be you instead. You’re so full of bullshit.” Bucky throws his gloved hands into the air, at a loss. “I’m the one who was in prison nearly three years, not you, so stop acting like you’re the victim in all this.”

“I’m not acting… it was my fault!” Steve shouts.

The dip in noise level from neighboring offices is noticeable. Steve bites his tongue, and he and Bucky sit in charged silence long enough for the hum of voices to resume.

It’s long enough, too, for Steve to find his anger again, though he holds it in chains. “None of this would have happened if I’d done a better job.”

It’s true. He had gotten too complacent.

He remembers that morning, only vaguely. The way the light through their gauzy curtains always made the room look so buttery and warm. By the time Steve found the wherewithal to blink himself to life and roll over, Bucky was already awake. That was normal, for a day like that one. Bucky always got antsy in the days leading up to a job; he’d been waking up at the crack of dawn all week. He'd settle once they got started, same as he always did, turning calm and steady as anything. But not yet.

“Morning,” Steve said, reaching out a hand to brush Bucky’s cheek.

Bucky took Steve’s hand in his own, pressed a kiss to his palm, then set Steve’s hand over his own chest.

“You okay?” Steve asked.

“I’m fine.” Bucky turned his head on the pillow. He even smiled, and the morning felt that much brighter. “You know.”

“You ready?”

“Always.”

“Good,” Steve said. “You remember the deal?”

Suddenly Bucky was in his face, crowded close, pressing their foreheads together. “You never said anything about a deal, dumbass,” he sighed.

“Just tell me,” Steve said, smoothing Bucky’s hair from his face. “We get in a bind, what do you do?”

“I haul your ass out of it.”

Steve’s eyes pinched shut. “No. You go.”

“I’ll promise it when you do, sweetheart.”

“God, Buck.” He wanted to smack him; he kissed him instead. Bucky hummed against Steve’s lips, sure of himself, then kissed back with unmitigated passion. The day’s importance faded in and out while Bucky’s hands found something to do under Steve’s shirt. They ought to have been up by then, making calls, double-checking. Steve never could bring himself to push Bucky away, though. Not for long.

“Don’t be a hypocrite, Steve,” Bucky said, dropping kisses over Steve’s neck. “I would never leave you like that.”

None of it had happened that way, of course—not really. Neither one of them had ducked any grand promises, or, as far as Steve recalls, said anything at all worth remembering. Only in the intervening years, while trying to pinpoint the moment he could have saved them, had Steve cooked up that reverie. In reality, Bucky had already gotten out of bed by the time Steve had woken up. He’d been in the kitchen making omelettes.

That’s how it had always been, even back when they were still only dabbling in petty crime. Or even further back, when they were just two kids hustling games of Three Card Monte on the street to make a quick buck. They never liked to discuss consequences much. Even when Bucky would insist it was best to be prepared, Steve said it brought bad luck to dwell on the job any more than necessary.

He’d called it confidence, then. Now he knows it was hubris.

That’s the thing about the worst day of your life. Usually, in its morning, everything seems fine.

It was supposed to go off without a hitch. Steve had planned the heist out, and Bucky had refined details to their inconsequential core. It wasn’t even a complicated romp; they’d done this kind of thing before. Bucky and Natasha would take a few counterfeit paintings Steve had done to an auction north of the city, sell them, and come home. Steve made too much of an ass out of himself at art auctions, Bucky said—too eager to be there, which made them conspicuous. He would stay at the apartment and have dinner ready by the time they made it back.

Natasha had called him sometime in the early afternoon. She was headed west, to be safe. The tip-off had only been about Bucky, not her.

“What do you mean—what tip-off?” Steve asked.

“Steve, he’s in a holding cell. He got arrested. Hasn’t he called you yet?”

Sure enough, when Steve had shown up at the New Rochelle Police Department, Bucky was sitting on a bench behind bars while a pinched-faced cop kept an eye on him, as if he might cause trouble. Three months later, Bucky was convicted of second degree forgery and sentenced to five years in a low-security prison.

Much to his lawyer’s chagrin, Bucky had insisted on keeping Steve and Natasha out of it. Steve had fought that tooth and nail. It wasn’t fair; they were Steve’s paintings. But Bucky had put his foot down and Steve, scared of losing him to more than just the judiciary system, had given in. He could just laugh, to think of that now—hindsight is twenty-twenty.

It came out during the trial that a private collector, last name Pierce, had tipped off the investigators about a forgery ring. There wasn’t any ring—it was only ever the two of them, plus sometimes Natasha or one of her connections—but investigation was led straight to Bucky. Steve can’t fathom why Pierce would have instigated such a dog hunt in the first place. He owned a casino outside the city, so it’s not as if the three of them had hurt his pockets.

Maybe they had hurt his pride. Maybe Steve had flubbed some detail in a forged painting Pierce bought off them. From what Steve had dug up about him during the trial, he was the type to take notice—and offense.

Steve had watched Bucky get hauled away through the courthouse doors, handcuffs chafing at his wrists, with no way to stop it. Whatever his motives, Pierce got what he wanted.

Now, in Steve’s office, Bucky leans forward to grip the edge of the desk, his gloved fingers black against its white surface.

“If you still blame yourself,” he whispers, fierce, “that’s your own damn fault, Rogers. I can’t absolve you. That’s your problem.”

Steve stares him down, ticking between fury and hurt like a metronome. “I never asked you to take the fall. Not one time.”

“You wanna take the blame?” Bucky’s voice peaks oddly. “Fine—have it, carry it around like a goddamn albatross for the rest of your life. But that doesn’t change what happened. You walking around like some martyr doesn’t undo my sentence. It doesn’t change what happened to me while I was in there.”

Bucky yanks his glove off and holds up his left hand. It’s scarred, the skin mottled an angry pink up to his wrist. He bends his fingers, as if trying to make a fist, but they fold halfway down before he winces and gives up. Steve stares in open-mouthed horror, but Bucky avoids his eye as he slides the glove back on.

“Bucky, what happened?”

“'Kitchen accident.' That’s what the report says, anyway.”

“Is that—was it not an accident?”

“Hard to say,” Bucky says flippantly. “Not like everyone working in the kitchen was a trained professional. Shit happens. People start fires.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were...”

“We always knew what the risks were, didn’t we?” Bucky says. He sounds so nonchalant, like he’d revealed nothing of importance. “I measured the consequences every day, Steve, even if you thought it would jinx us or whatever bullshit you said. I know you did too, even though you didn’t like to talk about it. We always knew this might happen.” Bucky takes a deep, steadying breath. “That’s why I took you off the visitors list. I couldn’t stand seeing you act like this was some great injustice when it was the exact opposite of that. We got caught. That’s what happens when you get caught—you go to jail.”

“We—only you went, Buck,” Steve rasps.

“You really think it would’ve been better if we both wound up in lock-up?”

Steve looks down at the neat row of pens on his desk.

“Shit,” Bucky mutters. “Of course. That’s why—that right there.”

“What?”

“I know the whole situation was hard on you too,” Bucky says. “It’s not like—I’m not unsympathetic to that, okay? I missed you too, it’s not like I… but I couldn’t deal with everything at once. I had to make a choice, only as it turns out, when you’re in prison, there aren’t a lot of options for how to do it.”

“So you cut me out.”

“Yeah, Steve, I did. And I’m sorry, okay?” Steve looks up at the softer tone of his voice. Bucky’s leaning toward him again, his eyes gentler. “I really am, sweetheart. But I needed… I don’t know, I needed to deal with it on my own. Trying accept what had happened and deal with the consequences was hard enough without you in my face every day, talking about appeals and how it was all so unfair. I couldn’t stand listening to how I didn’t deserve to be there, like I didn’t make my own choices.”

“You could have at least—” Steve breaks off, lip trembling. He bites it till it stills, then tries again. “You could have told me all that. I would have given you space.”

But Bucky shakes his head. “Maybe.  I didn’t know how to ask”

“Bucky, I’d give you all I’ve got. If you'd just—”

“I know. God, I _know,_ don’t I?”

Steve wipes at his traitorous eyes. “Please just ask,” he whispers, “if there’s ever a next time.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for minutes that feel like hours, searching each other’s faces. Steve can’t decide what he sees in Bucky’s—but he’s always been guarded, a fortress fit with ramparts and balustrades. He has no idea what Bucky might find on his own face's open door. He feels trampled into the earth, and all the guiltier for that; he’s on the verge of spiralling down.

“Bucky, are you—I mean.” Steve pauses; breathes. “Are you doing alright, at least?”

“Sure. I’m fine.” Bucky shrugs, then glances at the clock on the wall.

“Somewhere to be?”

Bucky’s mouth twists. “I don’t mean to duck out on you. I know we’re not done.”

Steve frowns.

“Oh, Rogers, of course we’re not done. Unless you wanna be, I guess. That’s fine.”

“No, I—no.” None of this feels any kind of resolved. They’re not done. He’s distantly glad that Bucky actually agrees with him, for once.

“To be continued, then.” Bucky offers a grim smile. “I gotta get back to work.”

“You have a job?” Steve asks. There’s so much he doesn’t know now.

“Yeah,” Bucky huffs. “Yeah, I’ll tell you about it sometime. But right now I gotta go.”

He stands; Steve mirrors him, then circles the desk for the door. He flicks the lock, but spins to face Bucky again instead of opening it. Steve gives himself a moment to take the whole of Bucky in properly.

His weight’s down, but not enough to make Steve worry. His clothes are practical but stylish—dark jeans, neat shirt, shoes with a thick sole.

Steve can’t help it. He takes three steps forward to close the distance between them and wraps both arms around him, burying his face in Bucky’s loose hair. The smell of him, like everything else, is familiar enough that he feels just that much more grounded. Bucky hasn’t changed so much.

Slowly, almost mechanically, Bucky’s arms raise to hold Steve, too. Then he breathes out, ragged, and sags into the embrace. They stay that way for longer than they ought to, but Steve isn't about to be the first to break away. He hasn’t held him in so long, and from where they stand now, he has no idea when or if he might be to do it again. His heart thuds, an unwieldy weight in his chest. There are so many things he wants to tell Bucky, but he’s not stupid enough to think any of it might be well-received right now.

He settles for saying, “I missed you,” and hopes it carries enough weight.

Bucky tenses just briefly, then settles with his hand at the back of Steve’s neck. The material of his glove is soft, though Steve wonders why he bothers wearing them on both hands. Symmetry, maybe.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he says, “I know.”

Pulling back, Steve meets his eye. There’s still tension, but it’s ebbing every second. Steve hadn’t realized how starved for touch he’d become. He leans in by inches, not aware of himself at first, lips parting of their own accord. Bucky’s eyes slip down, like he’s tracking the movement, then they linger too long. His hand rises to grip Steve’s jaw, and for one staggering moment, Bucky looks entirely unsure of himself.

Then he closes his eyes. His hand at Steve’s jaw is no longer caressing him, instead holding him at bay.

Steve’s soaring hopes crash back to earth in a tangled heap. He steps away, stumbling over a chair leg, but manages to keep a few awkward feet of space between them.

“I—I just don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bucky says.

“Why’s that?” Steve says, voice thin. He stares at the hardwood.

“I have a lot to reacclimate to.”

“Right.” He’d known that. It was stupid to even try; he just couldn’t help it. “Got it.”

“Steve—”

“It’s okay, Buck.” Steve glances up and tries to smile. “It’s fine.”

“I just think we should get used to each other again, before we decide if we want to—take it any further.”

“Sure. Makes sense,” Steve says, then reaches for the door to hold it open. “Let me know if you want to see me again.”

“Oh, Jesus, Rogers. I’ll spell it out for you—yes, I do.”

“Okay.” Steve takes a shallow breath, trying to believe it. “Well, you have my number.”

“You’re welcome to call me, too.”

“You don’t have voicemail.”

“I’ll pick up.”

Bucky pauses in the threshold and reaches for Steve’s hand. Despite himself, Steve lets him take it. Bucky squeezes his fingers, rather than saying anything else. In that moment, standing there embarrassed and hurt but still so filled with love that it almost terrifies him, Steve thinks that Sam may have had it right.

Neither one of them knows how to stay away from the other.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art featured in this chapter created by [KazablanKa](http://kazablanka96.tumblr.com/).

Alone in his office, Steve spends ten excruciating minutes trying to go through recent acquisition files before he gives up. He never calls out sick if he can help it, so he’s got plenty of days built up. He holds a hot washcloth to his face in the bathroom for two minutes, then goes to find Maria, the gallery's director. She tells him to get out before he even gets the question all the way out. Wouldn’t do to puke on the art, he guesses.

Once he’s back at his apartment, Steve collapses on his bed and decides he might actually be sick after all. His stomach is unsettled—even the thought of eating makes him want to hurl—and his head is pounding like cops at a door. From the bedside drawer, he retrieves a few ibuprofen and dry swallows them before hunkering down under the covers, still in his work clothes. He’ll sleep it off; maybe after a power nap, he won’t feel so terrible.

But sleep won’t come. The headache abates somewhat after the pills kick in, but he still feels on edge, like he might rattle apart at the seams. _It’s called anxiety,_ Bucky used to tell him, any time Steve couldn’t figure out why he was feeling so poorly. _Come on, let’s watch a movie, get you good and distracted._

They’d been so good together, once. They’d known each other so well.

He ought to have stayed at work. That way, he might have something productive to do besides get lost in his own head. If he keeps digging holes for himself like this, he’ll hit China one of these days. Or, scientifically speaking, he’d hit the Earth’s molten core. At least that might put him out of his misery.

Steve doesn’t know how to climb out of this one.

He’d been right. Bucky had cut him off to deal with prison himself. The reasons for it, though, were ones he’d never considered. The thought that it was a direct reaction to Steve’s own behavior made him that much sicker with guilt. He couldn’t have mucked it up any further if he’d actively tried. In trying to take on too much of Bucky’s burden, Steve had as good as abandoned him with the whole thing and more.

The hardest part to swallow, though, is that he’s not sure how he could have behaved differently. Even if Bucky had tried to explain it to him, tried to tell him this was something he needed to shoulder on his own, would Steve have listened to him? Bucky has a penchant for suffering in silence, of brushing things off. He hadn’t so much as _hinted_ to Steve that he’d been injured, for Christ’s sake. Who knows what else happened to him in prison?

Maybe Bucky knew Steve wouldn’t have listened—couldn’t be reasoned with about this. They’d been together since college and known each other twice as long; Bucky could had predicted that asking Steve for space to handle this himself might have only made Steve double down on trying to help him.

The ache in Steve’s head crescendos violently. The ibuprofen hadn’t curbed it after all. He sets a gentle hand at his temple and rubs, waiting for the pain to subside enough so that he can think straight again.

Steve knows he ought to trust Bucky more than this. That’s been his biggest failing. Where had it started? Had Steve lost faith in him when he’d been caught? No—no, that couldn’t be. Steve _does_ trust him. But not in the ways Bucky needed him to, not in the ways that let Bucky trust him back.

At least no one can tell him the mess isn’t his fault, this time.

Despite everything, though, Steve would give anything to have Bucky back. Do anything to make sure they never fell apart like this again, that he never forced Bucky to go it alone—whatever it took. Steve thinks he can forgive Bucky for shutting him out now that he understands why he’d done it. He’s still hurt, sure, but more than that, he feels resolved to make this right. They’ve been through enough that he’s positive they can make it out of this, too, in whatever shape that might take.

He can only hope Bucky believes the same thing. That he’s willing to try. It will take both of them.

His thoughts turn to Pierce, and sometime later, he falls asleep. He doesn’t wake again till his alarm blares the next morning.

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

They don’t speak again till the weekend. Sam forces Steve out of the house for a Saturday morning run through Prospect Park. Steve barrels ahead of him on the path, partly out of a desire to avoid conversation, but also because it helps clear his head to focus on his feet and breathing like this. The air is cold, bracing—clarifying, in some way.

Sam finds him waiting on a bench at the park’s edge and verbally berates him, but it’s all with a smile. Steve smiles too, and Sam seems happy to see it.

“So how’d it go?” Sam asks.

“How’d what go?”

“With Bucky, dumbass.” When Steve raises an eyebrow, Sam smacks his shoulder. “Give me some credit. I haven’t seen you look at your phone once—ergo, he finally called.”

Steve shifts on the bench to make room for Sam. “Fine,” he says, then takes a long pull of water. He’s still just a bit out of breath.

“Oh, come on.”

“Thought you said you didn’t want to be in the middle of it?”

“I’m just asking after you.” Sam holds up his hands. “Forgive me for caring. Won’t happen again.”

“Oh—Sam, sit back down.” Steve yanks him back to the bench by the hem of his shirt. “It was … fine. He came by the gallery. We talked. He left.”

“That all?”

“Yeah.” Steve scuffs his shoe against the path. “That’s all.”

“Oh. Shit. Really?”

“Did you expect anything different? You were the one trying to convince me we were over a week ago.”

“I know, I just hoped I was wrong, I guess.”

“Well, you weren’t.”

“Damn, Steve.” Sam shakes his head, folding over his lap. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Yeah, well. Like I said, it’s fine. We’re not—we’re on speaking terms now, I think.”

Sam prods him in the shoulder. “How you holding up?”

Steve grimaces, staring at the sky. “You know me. Taking it in stride.”

“C’mon, Steve. It’s okay.”

A shuddering breath forces itself out of Steve’s chest. He supposes Sam knows him well enough by now that trying to hide it doesn’t make much difference. Sam has always been a sharp observer; he probably wants Steve to say it out loud for his own sake, more than anything else.

“I still love him,” Steve says, voice hitching. “Even if he—he wants space. I don’t know, Sam. I’ll be alright. Always am, right?”

“Yeah.” Sam considers him a long while, then nods. “You’re a resilient motherfucker. Now let’s go, I’ll buy your lunch.”

He makes good on that promise, and Steve starts to feel that even if he can’t see land just yet, he’s at least treading water now.

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

It takes a considerable amount of pacing, but eventually he works up the courage to give Bucky a call.

It’s like he’s a teenager all over again, fumbling his way through everything. He feels like he has so much to lose, the way he had when he first realized he liked boys, too, at age fifteen. Three months later he’d discovered that actually, mostly who he liked was just Bucky. It had taken him another year to come out to Bucky, five weeks for Bucky to say Steve, is it okay if I’m gay too, and two more years for either one of them to confess his feelings. In all the time between, he felt like he had completely forgotten how to talk to Bucky, even desperate as he was for his approval and affection. It had been stupid; he already had both of those things in spades.

He’s not sure he has either one, now. But he wants them back.

He gives himself something to do with his hands first by rifling through the cabinets for dinner. There’s soup, and things for a grilled cheese. Basic enough that he won’t be ruined if he burns any of it. He gets the soup on the stove and is buttering a slice of bread when he taps the dial button.

The ringback tone sounds shrill and intimidating in his ear, but it’s interrupted in seconds.

“Rogers,” comes Bucky’s voice.

“Hey,” Steve says. “Barnes.”

“Hey yourself—oh.” There’s a fumbling sound on the line. “Gimme a minute, okay?”

Steve waits as placidly as he can, lining up the cheese slices till they sit perfectly on the bread. He has the sandwich in the pan before he hears anything more than indistinct fuzzing.

“There,” Bucky breathes. “Sorry. What’s up?”

“Oh, uh—” Steve’s voice sounds grating even to his own ears. There are so many things he wants to say, so many things he knows he _should_ say, but just hearing Bucky’s voice, his nerve fails him. He’s not sure Bucky’s ready to hear any of that just yet. Maybe he can just try to make light conversation first, see if their old rapport resurfaces. “Just calling to say hello, I guess,” he finishes lamely.

“Well, hello.”

“Hi.”

Bucky barks a dry laugh. “Jesus, kid.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s still me.”

“I know.” Steve sighs, ashamed that he’d already botching this, and flips the grilled cheese over without a spatula. Bucky always used to yell at him for that, about how he’d burn his fingers one of these days. He never had. “It’s just …”

“Okay, okay, easy,” Bucky says. “Here: How’ve you been, Steve? Never really got the chance to ask, the other day.”

“I’ve been—fine.”

“That all you’re gonna give me?”

“Really, I’ve been fine.”

Bucky lets out a breath, and there’s the sound of shifting on his end. Steve wonders if he’s lying down somewhere, stretched out on a couch or a bed. “Guess I deserve that,” Bucky mutters.

“No—Buck, I didn’t mean it like that,” Steve says.

“Fine. Wanna try the truth then?”

“You really wanna hear it?”

“Why else would I ask? Christ.”

Steve stirs his soup, contemplating how to answer. He really has been—fine, for the most part, these past two years. Coasting along uneventfully. He’s not sure if Bucky is asking about the past two years or just today, though.

“Really,” he insists. “I’ve been okay. Just bored most of the time, like I’ve been waiting around for something to happen.”

“Wonder what that was.” Bucky hums a soft note, then changes tack. “So that art gallery. That recent? You painting any?”

“Been there about a year now, in sales. The art’s shit but the pay is … less so, most of the time. I like it alright most days.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, and Steve knows he’s been caught dodging. “Are you painting?”

Steve’s mouth presses together as he moves his grilled cheese carefully to a plate. “Eh,” he hedges, slicing it down the middle. “Here and there.”

“Which means you haven’t done shit.”

“Buck—” Steve drops the knife more forcefully than he means to; it bounces off the counter and nearly takes a chunk out of his foot. “Shit,” he mumbles, reaching for it. “Look, I don’t mean to sound rude or anything, I’m glad to be talking to you, but—why do you care?”

“What do you mean, why do I care?” Bucky asks, mildly offended.

“You barely spoke to me for two years, and now you’re being so … casual. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

“We don’t have to talk.” Bucky’s voice is low. “You called me.”

“Aw, don’t jump to conclusions, good God. I only meant you’re being awful nice for someone who didn’t have a good word to say about me not five days ago.”

“Steve,” Bucky says.

“What? You really took the mick out of me, Bucky. You claiming you didn’t?”

“No, no, I’m just trying to—not do that, this time, I guess.” Something clatters in the background, punctuated with a muffled curse. Steve wonders what he knocked over. “What, you want me to yell at you again?”

Steve huffs a wry laugh. “No.”

“You wanna yell at me?”

“Not right now.”

“Then we can try it my way, yeah?”

“Seems a little avoidant, if you ask me.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’d just like to have a pleasant conversation with you for five minutes. That so much to ask, that we just talk for a minute? Catch up with each other?”

Steve dumps his soup in a bowl and heads for the table. “Sure,” he says, trying for chipper. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m—” Bucky breaks off, chuckling.

“Were you about to say ‘fine’?”

“Who says we don’t still know each other, huh?”

Steve’s hand freezes midway to his mouth, spoon clutched carefully. “Nobody’s saying that, Buck. Are you saying that?”

“Fucking Christ. Let’s set a timer, see how long it takes for one of us to put his foot in his mouth again. Sound good?”

They both breathe quietly over the line for a long minute. Steve’s food is getting cold, but he can’t find much of an appetite, even with a proper meal right in front of him. He imagines Bucky sprawled across a bedspread, his hair fanning out against a pillow. He’ll be chewing his lip while he thinks, his straight teeth carving indents that will linger long after he’s let his lip free. Nervous habit—better than biting his nails, at least.

Steve clears his throat. “Where are you, anyway?”

“Queens,” Bucky says, offhand.

“Oh. Why?”

“Becca’s sister-in-law had a spare bed. She’s too nice to kick me out, even though she really should have by now. You remember Penny and Curt, right?”

“Sure,” Steve says. A frown creases his forehead. Bucky loved his sister, but he’d never been fond of the family she’d married into. He had always tried to beg off when Becca would invite them all around for dinner.

“They’re not so bad,” Bucky says, like he’d expected the question. That or he’s just rambling, latching onto a safe topic of conversation. “Once you get to know them. A little born again, if you know what I mean, but that’s fine now that they’ve stopped trying to drag me to church with them. Curt helped me find a job and all, so I guess I’m warming up to them.”

“Yeah, you said you had a job.”

“It’s nothing special, just an auto repair place in Astoria.”

“An auto—Buck, you have an engineering degree. That’s really the best you could do?”

Something thumps on Bucky’s end, like a hand smacking a mattress. “Yeah, well, I’m a convicted felon now, aren’t I, sweetheart? Beggars can’t be fuckin choosers, so here we are.”

Steve’s breath hitches. So much for safe.

“Anyways, it’s new,” Bucky continues, “and it’s a nice place so I’m trying not to mess it up. Maybe I can do better once I’ve been out longer, but for right now, this is the best I’ve got. That okay with you?”

“Bucky—of course. You don’t need me to say that.”

“You’re damn right I don’t.” He sighs. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be.”

“I don’t mean to be mean to you either, you know.”

“I get it, Buck. It’s okay.” He reaches for his sandwich. What would his mother say, if he didn’t eat it? Nothing good. “So—job, spare bed.”

“Well, it’s a whole room. They bought the house and never had any kids, so it’s empty.”

“That on purpose, or …?”

“I don’t know. Feels kind of rude to ask.”

“Right. It’s not like, a nursery or anything?”

“Jesus, no. It’s just a guest bedroom, Steve. You want me to describe it in detail?”

Steve chews his bite and swallows. It’s too dry. “Would it be weird if I did?”

He can almost hear Bucky smile over the line. “Walls are yellow, not like an obnoxious shade, just butter color. Lace curtains probably passed down since the 1800s. I’ve got a dresser and a mirror and the bed’s just a twin. The mattress sucks.” Steve hears squeaky springs over the line. “Hear that? Awful, but it’s free, so.”

“What are you doing about clothes?” Steve asks. He’d had to put most of Bucky’s things in storage, but some of them he keeps in his closet; wears from time to time. Not that he’d admit to that now. But Bucky had never called, so it’s not like he has them to wear.

“Ma got me some stuff through the church. I’ve bought a few things.”

“If you want your old ones back, I’ve still got everything.”

“I—yeah,” Bucky says. “That’d be nice. You still got that green hoodie?”

“The one from Acadia?”

“Yeah.”

Top shelf of his closet. “Of course. All of your stuff is either here or in the storage unit, Buck, like I promised. You’re welcome to it any time.”

Bucky huffs a laugh. “I don’t know why, but I just assumed you would’ve cleaned house and gotten rid of most of it.”

“Me? Clean house?”

His laugh is real this time. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I’ll talk to Penny and let you know if I’ve got room to get it all out of your hair.”

“All out of—right.” Steve pushes his soup away. _Forgive me, mother._

“No need for you to pay to store it, or for it to take up your space. You don’t have much, if I remember correctly.”

“So we’re...”

“What?”

“We’re properly broken up, then.”

Bucky sighs, and it’s almost a groan. He’s quiet for a long time. Steve flexes his fingers around the phone, shifts it to his other ear. He ought to get up from the table, since he’s not eating, and go sit somewhere more comfortable. The hard back of the dining chair feels supportive somehow, though.

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky says, finally. “Thought I made that clear last time.”

“Guess I just need to hear you say it directly.”

“I’m breaking up with you.”

Steve’s elbow hits the table. He leans into it, face in hand. “Sounds so high school.”

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

Steve laughs, a pained sound. “Well, we both know that’s not true.”

“Steve. C’mon, it’s okay, right?” Bucky’s voice is low, gentle. “I’m not severing ties with you. You’re still my best friend.”

“Really?” Steve hates how eager he is to hear that.

“Yeah, kid, of course. We made a pact in the sixth grade, remember? ‘Cross my heart, never part, best friends from the very start.’”

“Shit. We shoulda known we were queer. I can’t believe you still know the words.”

“I don’t forget a promise.”

“Okay.”

“You need me to leave you alone a while? We don’t have to keep talking right now.”

“No,” Steve says. He takes in a full breath and lets it out slow. The edge of the chair digs into the backs of his knees. “It’s not like I didn’t know already. Please don’t hang up.”

“Alright. I won’t.”

They lapse into silence for a while, long enough for Steve to gather the wherewithal to put his dishes away. Bucky murmurs a question at the clatter of ceramic, then lets Steve go quiet again. He keeps the phone pressed to his ear, just listening to Bucky breathe, till he’s settled onto the couch with his feet tucked up.

“So you said about your ma,” he says softly.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, just as gentle. “She knows I’m out.”

“‘Course she does. I’d’ve been madder at you for that one.”

That might be laughter on Bucky’s end. It’s hard to tell.

“That explains why she hasn’t called me in awhile, I guess,” Steve says.

“Shit,” Bucky gasps. “I didn’t even think about that.”

Bucky’s ma had always been something like a second mother to Steve, and the Barneses had been a great help to Steve and his mother when she got sick. After a long, hard battle with lung cancer, Steve’s mother eventually passed away after Steve’s first year at college. With her gone, Steve was bereft, both emotionally and financially—but Bucky’s family had stepped up to help him as much as they could. Steve stayed over at the Barneses most semester breaks, ostensibly on an air mattress on Bucky’s floor, though most nights after they got together, they’d crammed into Bucky’s twin bed together. Even after Steve filled out during junior year, they found a way to fit.

He’d just assumed Freddie had been busy. She could be forgetful; it hadn’t bothered him.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

Steve shrugs, then remembers Bucky can’t see him and says, “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’ll tell her to call you.”

“You don’t have to. She birthed you, not me.”

“Ah, Christ, Steve. Don’t be like that. Of course she still wants to hear from you.”

It’s all such a mess. Steve had briefly considered, when they started dating, how difficult it might be if they ever split up, the way their lives were so entangled. But he’d also been a teenager at the time, so it’s not as if he had all that much forethought. Young and in love and horny as hell, he’d forgotten about that particular worry after a few weeks. They just wouldn’t ever break up; problem solved.

He’d kill for everything to feel that simple again.

“Anyway,” Steve says, and clears his throat. “So this new job—that gonna be long-term?”

“Subtle segue there, kid.”

“I didn’t know you knew enough about cars to repair them.”

Bucky snorts. “You’d think that’d be a problem, huh? But they liked that I had a degree in something tangentially relevant, and it’s not like I’m a slow learner, so I’m getting there. Still doing mostly basic stuff—oil changes, tire rotation, you know.”

“Your hands seemed kind of clean for that.”

“Oh, I got a pumice stone and creams and shit. Plus I can’t do anything that requires too much finesse because of old leftie, so sometimes they just stick me on reception or the books and call it a day.”

“Right. You said—a kitchen fire?”

“Some stupid pyromaniac got too frisky with the stovetop.” Bucky sighs. “I tried to put it out.”

Of course. Steve refrains from rolling his eyes; he would have done the same, in Bucky's position. “It give you much trouble?”

“Better day by day, or so my physical therapist says. It still aches like a motherfucker most of the time, and I had to learn to write with the other hand. Good thing most people just use computers nowadays, I’ll tell you.”

“So, do you have any—are you—”

“Spit it out, Rogers.”

Steve grips a throw pillow and hugs it close to his chest. He’d forgotten to turn a lamp on in here. By now it’s full dark outside, the kitchen overhead illuminating the doorway the only source of light. It makes the room feel even smaller.

“I guess I’m just wondering,” Steve says, fiddling with the tassels on the pillow, “what your plans are, now that you’re out.”

Bucky’s exhale drags at his lips. “Don’t really have any, truthfully.”

“Really?”

“Not right now. Just taking it a day at a time, I guess.”

“Oh.”

“Why, you got plans?”

“I’ve just—no, I’ve just been thinking the past few days.”

“Well, what about?”

Steve twirls a tassel around his pointer finger. “Why were you at that club, Bucky?”

“The club …?”

“The—the club in Manhattan, playing blackjack with your sunglasses on indoors like some asshole off World Poker Tour. The _club.”_

“Oh, right, that club,” Bucky huffs, and he sounds like he knows he’s been caught hedging. “I was just there to play.”

Bucky had always liked cards. When they were kids, it was basic magic tricks he learned out of a magazine. When they got a little older, started thinking maybe there was some way for them to earn some cash, he could hustle damn near anyone playing three card monte on the street. But he’d always preferred real games with rules, like poker. He’d learned to count cards in his free time; just simple math, he said. That’s when they started making real money.

But that place—it was too private, too fancy. Especially now. Something didn’t add up.

“Were you counting?” Steve asks.

“I don’t do that anymore,” Bucky says.

“Sure you don’t.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“You really weren’t counting?”

“It’s… habit,” Bucky admits. “I don’t do it consciously anymore.”

“So you were there to—what, just play?”

“Why else?”

“Just seems, I don’t know, like kind of a bougie place. Not somewhere I would expect to see you.” Apart from the obvious reasons why Steve hadn’t expected to see him.

“We went to plenty of bougie places before.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, eyebrows raised. “Before being the emphasis.”

Bucky sighs, and there’s a squeaking noise like he’s shifting on the bed. “Look, Rogers,” he says slowly, with weight.

Steve’s heart drops into his stomach. “Shit, Bucky, what is it?”

“It’s nothing. I’ve got a handle on it.”

“If it was really nothing, you wouldn’t need to have a handle on it.”

“Just shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, I can’t know if you don’t tell me! You can’t act cryptic like that and then just expect me to take it sitting down, not now.” Steve sits up, his feet hitting the floor. “You just got out of prison. I don’t know who you met in there.”

“Oh, Jesus fucking Mary, it’s not that big of a deal.”

“Then why won’t you tell me about it?”

“Because it’s—” Bucky cuts off and makes a rough noise. “Fuck. Why do you have to be so sharp, huh? If you were stupider, this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Bucky,” Steve pleads, searching for something to say that might make Bucky let him in again by even an inch. He knows he can’t offer help, not yet, but he wants to so badly he can taste it like blood in his mouth.  “Look, just tell me you’re safe at least.”

The line stays silent for a loaded minute. That’s all the answer Steve needs.

“Buck, please—”

“Shut up. I’m thinking.”

“Will you just tell me?”

“Can you promise you’ll stay out of it?”

Steve waits, his fingers tight around the phone.

“Rogers.”

“You know I can’t promise that,” Steve says, anguished, “not if you’re in trouble.”

Much as Steve might wish that he could, if Bucky is in some kind of danger here—and his unwillingness to come clean suggests that he is—Steve knows he’d ultimately break his word. Lying just to placate Bucky would only be manipulative.

“Steve, Christ, it’s just a small thing, okay? You don’t need to worry about me.”

“What if you end up back in prison?”

“I’m not gonna—”

“Well, how do you know that? Just tell me, or I’m gonna think you’re in with the fucking mafia or something.”

“Jesus, it’s not the _mafia.”_

“Gang. Drug cartel.”

“Oh, lay off! I’m fine, Steve, I’m not in a gang and I’m not going to end up in prison again. Please just calm down.”

“How do you know?”

Bucky exhales violently. His voice comes strained and halting through the phone. “Because—because I’m working for the guy who put me there last time.”

Steve’s stomach drops like the floor had been pulled out from under it. “You’re—what? Do you mean _Pierce?”_

“Turns out he has a lot of influence,” Bucky says. “He helped ensure I got out early in return for… a couple favors.”

Steve shakes his head, disbelieving. “But why?”

“I don’t get it either, but he’s got me by the balls, so I don’t ask a lot of questions.”

“What kind of favors?”

“Just stuff he doesn’t want to do himself.”

“Bucky, if he’s got you doing shady stuff—”

“Oh, my God, you hypocrite! We do shady stuff all the time, Steve!”

“That’s—different.”

“Like hell it is,” Bucky snarls. “Just because you have some Robin Hood complex about it doesn’t make our primary source of income any less illegal.”

“This a separate argument,” Steve says, rubbing at his forehead. “I don’t want you going back to prison, but if you’re under some tycoon’s thumb, that makes you high profile. That’s dangerous.”

“I’m not high profile—that’s the point.” Bucky’s voice drops out at the end, like he’d jerked his phone away from his mouth. “He wants information on people, competitors. I double his money while I’m at it.”

“You see a cut of that?”

“No, I don’t, but I see the outside world, and that’s good enough for me.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, breathing deep. “Why’d you make a deal with him? You could’ve been out for good behavior around the same time. I don’t get it.”

“Look, Pierce is—he’s not the kind of guy you say no to, alright?”

“You have to get away from him. This isn’t good.”

“Aw, Christ, you’re not my mom, Steve, and you’re not my moral compass either. I’m doing what I have to.” There’s rustling, and Steve hears someone call Bucky’s name on his end. “Look, I gotta go, sweetheart. I’ll call you later. I’ll have Ma call you.”

“Buck—”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m fine.”

The line goes dead before Steve has another chance to protest. He drops his phone onto the coffee table, then bends over his lap to cradle his face in both hands. Much as Bucky might want him to let this lie, Steve knows that he won’t. Maybe he’s repeating his same mistakes all over again, but he has to find a way to help Bucky out of this. He won’t let Bucky shut him out again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reblog the artwork on tumblr [here](http://kazablanka96.tumblr.com/post/179045618104/the-artwork-for-my-collaboration-with)!


	4. Chapter 4

Information on Pierce is hard to find. What Steve had managed to unearth during the trial was superficial, told him nothing—dry like an encyclopedia entry. Pierce seemed as unremarkable as any other corporate family man. None of it had helped Bucky with his case, but Steve had kept searching anyway for lack of anywhere else to put his energy.

Pierce has been in the casino business a long time, though most of the sources Steve found seem to discuss his political leanings. He’s never made a bid for office himself, though he’s not without support; there’s many an article on why he’d make a good candidate. Good for what, Steve can’t imagine. It seems Pierce has his hands in just about every conservative lobbying group Steve can think to look up, in one way or another. He’s recouped substantial investments in the prison industrial complex, for one, which explains a few things.

Steve’s never been above hating someone’s guts for their politics alone, but it’s not as if he’s capable of leveraging that against Pierce. He needs something personal. A jumping off point, something, _anything_ that can help him get Bucky out of this goddamn mess.

Bucky, who hasn’t answered his calls in days. Steve doesn’t bother with voicemails anymore—he’d worn his voice out on the first few—but he keeps calling. Eventually Bucky has to pick up. He’ll see sense and let Steve help him. What’s the point of being out of prison if his will still isn’t his own?

Eventually, Steve finds in his files an article from the archives of the New York Times that seems promising enough. It’s a profile of Pierce, focused not on his reputation as some gambling tycoon—but as an art collector. Steve had filed it away as relevant two years ago, thinking it might have held some crucial nugget of information.

A color photo heads the piece, captioned: _Alexander Pierce stands in front of a Chagall painting worth an estimated $10 million. Pierce’s private collection is one the most valuable in the world._

> **Casino owner collects more than coins**
> 
> At one time, the name “Pierce” was synonymous with one thing: coal. These days that seems to be changing. Now, when you hear the name, you might think of the casino tycoon that’s taken New York by storm.
> 
> But what Alexander Pierce wants the public to know, he told me over drinks at the Wyvern, is that he’s a self-made man—an apple landing far from the tree of his father’s company. The second son of coal tycoon Grayson Pierce, Alexander Pierce left his father’s company behind at the ripe age of 25 to start his own business, much to his family’s chagrin.
> 
> Now, though, after opening his own casinos in Las Vegas and now New York, Pierce has amassed a personal net worth greater than the value of Pierce Coal in its entirety at the time of its dissolution in 2009.
> 
> “My father always believed gambling was beneath him,” Pierce said over the antique mahogany desk in his personal study. “What he didn’t understand was that business is, inherently, a gamble. I just took that more literally than most.”
> 
> In 2012, he was valued at approximately $1.2 billion. He told me, with a bit of a laugh, that that’s a conservative estimate.
> 
> But we’re not here to talk about how a man makes his money. The more interesting question: What on earth does he do with it?
> 
> “I’ve always had a taste for the finer things,” Pierce said. “I would credit that to my mother more than anyone. As children, she would take us to the opera, gallery openings, the finest restaurants. Most kids are eating chicken nuggets at age five; by then I had a taste for quail eggs.”
> 
> Such a refined upbringing led Pierce to start collecting fine art. It began mostly as a hobby once he came into his trust fund at 21—a way to invest his money while still getting something out of it in the meantime, he says. Since then, Pierce has amassed a personal collection set to rival any museum or professional gallery. Indeed, several pieces he owns are on loan to museums across the globe.
> 
> His “home gallery,” as he refers to it, takes up an entire floor of his Manhattan home. An independent appraiser hired by the _Times_ valued this particular collection at over $350 million.

Steve skims the rest of the article, then doubles back to reread it. For the life of him he can’t remember what about this had struck him as important. Sure, it had been striking to realize how serious of a collector Pierce was, but it’s not as if that’s useful. Steve could have guessed he wasn’t pedestrian just by the look of him. Reading the article again only confirms Steve’s theory about wounding Pierce’s pride.

At the end of the article, a note reads: _For a digital gallery of the more than 40 works of art in Pierce’s home collection, click through the slideshow below._

He tabs through the slideshow, his jaw dropping lower by degrees. The collection is wildly impressive—better than some museums Steve has been to; certainly better than the gallery where he works.  

He’d kill to have even one of those paintings hanging on his walls, but he’s never had that kind of money and he never will. The best he might be able to manage is a recreation by his own hand, but good though he is, it just wouldn’t be the same.

Shaking his head, Steve switches to an article detailing the opening of Pierce’s New York casino instead. While reading, he tries Bucky again. No answer.

He’ll just have to keep trying.

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

Bucky’s ma calls him on Sunday. Bucky must have followed through on his promise to talk to her then, despite how poorly their last conversation had ended. It’s good to hear her voice again.

Freddie invites Steve around for dinner, the way she used to do when he was still in high school. Most Sundays he and his own mother ended up crowded around the dinner table at the Barneses’. It had been disconcerting to Sarah the first few times. She and Steve were usually both pretty quiet, and the Barnes family was _loud._ You would think there were ten of them instead of four—though sometimes there were enough cousins around to make it ten.

It became ritual, though, to the point where Freddie didn’t even bother to call to remind them. Almost every Sunday, like clockwork, Steve and Sarah showed up on their doorstep at six o’clock sharp, dessert in hand. Neither of their families had ever had much, but they always managed Sunday dinners.

He and Bucky made it there less and less while climbing uphill through college. After they had graduated and finally gotten a proper place together, they had wanted to start traditions of their own. Once or twice they had had Bucky’s family over for Sunday dinner instead. They had all had to sit on the living room floor to eat together, but it had been nice—like they were picking up a torch, somehow.

Steve accepts without deliberation.

On Sunday, he knocks on the Barneses’ door with his free hand. Cradled in the other is a fresh apple crumble pie—never as good as his mother’s, but passable enough.

“Steve!” Freddie greets him when she opens the door. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, dear. Come in, come in. Is that your mother’s pie?”

“Close as I can manage,” Steve says.

“Well, set that down in the kitchen, then come back here and give me a proper hug. It’s been too long!”

He deposits the pie as directed in a kitchen smelling richly of roast chicken. Christ, he’d missed Freddie’s cooking. Before he can make it back through the doorway, though, Freddie sweeps into the room and wraps him up into the best hug he’s had in ages. Her grip is firm but warm, with her chin hooked over his shoulder. She smells like cinnamon. Something in his chest loosens, and he lets out a shaky breath.

“Sweet Steve,” Freddie says. “We’ve missed you around here.”

“Yeah,” Steve says roughly. “I’ve missed you all too.”

She steps back, but keeps a grip on his shoulders. Her eyes are soft. “I was so sorry to hear about you and Bucky.”

Steve’s face falls. “Yeah, I—yeah. Me too.”

Her palm finds his cheek. He leans into the touch, trying for a smile. “Well, I know he’s my son, but you’re as good as, so I’m not picking sides. You’ll find your way back to each other.”

“Oh,” Steve huffs. “I don’t know about it this time, Freddie.”

“That boy is too stubborn for his own good. Actually, you both are. You’re best friends, for Pete’s sake.”

Steve shrugs helplessly.

“It’s just so silly,” Freddie says, letting him go so she can check the chicken in the oven.

“Do you need any help?” Steve asks.

“Oh, no, I’ve got it.” She smiles over her shoulder. “It’s silly, I was saying. He’s been away for so long, it seems to me he should be happy to see you again. But what do I know? I’m just his mother.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Yes, so you’ve both said.”

“Look, Freddie,” Steve says slowly. She straightens and looks at him, wiping her hands off on a towel. “It’s okay if you’re—if you’re angry with me, about everything. I’d understand.”

“Steve.” Freddie takes a deep breath. “Was I upset with both of you when I found out what you’d been up to? Absolutely, of course I was. You remember.”

He does. He’d been the one to call and tell her when Bucky had been arrested. Freddie had gone so quiet on the phone that he thought she might have hung up, but that was just her way; she wasn’t a crier.

“But now that that’s all behind us,” Freddie continues, “I’m just happy to have you both in one piece. All things considered, it could have come out a lot worse.”

“That’s—kind of you, Fred.”

She shrugs. “Things are only as complicated as we let them be, dear. I for one prefer to keep things simple.”

“How do you do that?” Steve asks, leaning back against the counter.

“Perspective,” she says, watching him, “and plenty of patience. And believing that everything will come out in the wash, in the end.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“Well, sometimes it takes two.” Freddie’s face scrunches. “And speaking of.”

Steve’s eyes widen. “Is Bucky—?”

“He should be here any moment.””

Steve considers diving out of the kitchen window, but he can’t leave now; that would be impossibly rude, not to mention obvious. With the conversation they’ve just had, Steve is certain that Freddie will let him escape only when she means to. It’s not as if he shouldn’t have expected this either. This is Bucky’s family. He ought to have asked.

“Yeah,” Steve sighs. “Should be fine, right?”

 

Dinner is as awkward as Steve would have guessed. He and Bucky sit across from each other, picking at their chicken with equal forced cheer while Freddie and George maintain the majority of the conversation. Bucky’s parents either don’t notice or willfully ignore their lack of participation. Steve eats to be polite and because he’ll never miss a meal that Freddie’s put before him, but it all goes down his throat like sandpaper.

It’s miserable. He should get to enjoy this dinner.

Bucky had walked through the front door and into the living room, a bottle of wine in hand. He’d been smiling, but as soon as he caught sight of Steve folded into an armchair, his face went flat. The wine nearly slipping out of his fingers was the only thing that gave him away.

“Ma,” Bucky had said. “You didn’t tell me Steve would be here.”

“Oh, didn’t I? Last minute addition,” Freddie said. “I just missed him so much!”

Bucky would never say a word in front of his mother, but he had raised an eyebrow at Steve in what was clearly reproach. Steve could imagine what was going through Bucky’s mind without him having to say it. _What are you doing here?_

Bucky’s disapproval only made Steve dig his heels in, same as always. This was Bucky’s family, but they were Steve’s family too. He’d decided in that moment that he would be damned if he let Bucky chase him away so easily.

So he had settled more comfortably into the chair and said, “Hey, Buck.”

Bucky had whisked away into the kitchen, muttering something about wine glasses.    

Steve’s vindictive pleasure at knowing Bucky is just as uncomfortable as Steve feels isn’t great, he knows. If it’s anything, it’s childish, but Bucky hasn’t answered or even acknowledged his calls in nearly a week. Steve isn’t giving up, and he’s not above fighting dirty to get Bucky to listen to him.

Now that he’s thinking, he ought to have thought of this strategy in the first place. He’s lucky that Freddie has more sense than he does, even if he doesn’t appreciate her obvious meddling.

After dinner, Steve puts the pie in the oven to reheat while George brews a pot of coffee. Bucky and Freddie are in the living room, talking in low voices.

“Oh, Bucky,” Freddie says, just loud enough to hear. “You know I don’t mean to cause you grief.”

“Warning might have been nice, is all,” Bucky says.

“If I’d warned you, would you have come?”

No response.

“See? You’re being nonsensical. Obviously you both still—”

“I’m going for a smoke,” Bucky says. “I’ll be back in a few.”

“I wish you’d quit that.”

“Trying, Ma, I promise.”

As Bucky lumbers past the kitchen doorway, he casts a glance at Steve. It’s furtive, like he hadn’t meant to, but Steve sees it anyway. He sets a timer for the pie for ten minutes, then turns to George, opening his mouth to speak.

“Expect you might want some fresh air,” George says, a knowing crinkle in his forehead.

“I—yeah,” Steve says, frowning.

“Go on.” George waves a hand at him. “I’ll mind the pie for you.”

“Thanks, George.”

“You’re welcome, son.”

Steve lurches out of the room and down the familiar hall, lined with grade school photos of Bucky and Becca. There’s a snapshot or two of Steve, too, mixed into the bunch. The door on the right is slightly ajar, no light pouring from the crack. Steve eases it open with a cautious hand. He’s spent thousands of hours in this room, easy, though it looks far different from how he remembers. Bucky’s parents had converted his bedroom into an office a year or so after he had officially moved out. Now, instead of the narrow bed and baseball pennants, there’s a sturdy desk and several rows of bookshelves.

A breeze rustles the curtains, coming through the open window. A slight gap in the fabric reveals Bucky, sitting on the fire escape. Steve crosses to the window and, one hand on the frame, leans out into the night.

Bucky startles. “Jesus,” he says, flashing Steve a dark look. “You need a bell.”

“Sorry,” Steve says. He climbs through the window clumsily. His feet clang against the grate as he sits, putting enough distance between Bucky and him to keep them both comfortable.

“Sure, Steve, join me, why don’t you?”

Steve’s eyes roll, and he settles more firmly with his back to the wall. The night out here is much too cold, and he’d left his coat inside, but Bucky is only in his sweater, too. Steve wraps his arms around his middle and shifts to look at him. The streetlights throw an orangey glow over him, strangely ethereal. Steve remembers all those summer nights spent out here as kids, and the way that warm light on Bucky’s face burned Steve up more than the sun ever could.

“You’re not smoking,” Steve says.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

Bucky’s brow pinches. “Because I quit.”

“But you said to your ma—”

“I know what I said.”

“Then why—”

“It’s a good excuse to get out of a room. Keep up.”

Steve reaches for the windowsill. “You want me to go?”

“No,” Bucky sighs. “Might as well stay, now you’re here.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“What?” Bucky turns to face him.

Steve blinks at him. “What do you mean, what?”

“You followed me out here. What do you want?”

“I want you to talk to me,” Steve says, “instead of just shutting down at the barest hint that I might care about what happens to you.”

“Kid.” Bucky’s head thumps back against the brick. “I know you care. That’s the problem.”

“Me caring about you is the problem?”

“Yeah, Steve, we’ve been over this.” When Bucky looks at him, it’s not without sympathy. There’s something almost sad about it. “You don’t let people breathe.”

“So you’re saying I’m—suffocating you.”

“No, Christ, I mean that’s what I said, but I don’t mean it to sound so harsh. I just mean that you make everything your problem, instead of letting me handle it on my own like I asked you to.”

“But your problems are my problems,” Steve says. “That’s how relationships work, Buck.”

Bucky’s mouth pulls flat. “Well, we’re not in one of those anymore, are we?”

Steve’s breath leaves him, hissing on the way out.

“Come on,” Bucky says, softer. “I’m not so great. You’re probably better off, given the circumstances.”

“I don’t want to be—Bucky.” Steve pauses to gather himself, rubbing at his hairline. “Your circumstances don’t have to be what they are if you’d just let me help you. You say I don’t let you breathe, but if I don’t stand close enough to make sure you’re still fogging up the mirror, you’d never even tell me if you were having trouble.”

Bucky scoffs. “That’s not true.”

“Bullshit it isn’t, or should I remind you of your hand?” The fingers of Bucky’s left hand flex like they heard him. “I can give you more examples, if you want them.”

“You’re just as stubborn.”

“Sure,” Steve huffs, throwing his hands in the air. “Let’s bring that up like I don’t know. But I’m not the one being blackmailed by a billionaire.”

A cat yowls somewhere up the street. The traffic light at the end of the block changes from red to green, and cars crawl forward after it. Bucky chews his lip, a deep fissure between his eyebrows. His whole body is tense—has been, since the moment he saw Steve in that chair. Steve had thought it was to prove a point, that he was unwelcome, that he was dodging Steve's calls for the same reason, and maybe he was. But there was more to it.

He’s worried. Steve knows him well enough to read the signs plain as if they were on billboards. No matter how nonchalant he suggests himself to be, how self-sufficient, he’s scared.

“Buck,” Steve says, barely a whisper. He reaches out a hand. When he lays his palm over Bucky’s knee, Bucky doesn’t swat it away or even recoil. He flinches, staring down at Steve’s fingers, but then he lifts his eyes to meet Steve’s.

“What, Steve?” he says. “You got some big plan to get me away from Pierce?”

“I—I don’t know yet,” Steve admits. He squeezes Bucky’s knee. “But I’m working on it.”

Bucky sighs shakily and drops his gaze to the street below. “You come up with something half-decent, I’ll consider listening to you.” His jaw tightens, and he pushes Steve’s hand away. “Consider—that doesn’t mean I’ll let you do it.”

Steve nods, his eyes wide. “Bucky, are you okay?”

“Depends on where you’re standing.”

“Right here,” Steve whispers. “Right next to you.”

Bucky’s face is inscrutable, but his throat works. “Then I’m okay.”

“Alright,” Steve says, trying not to read into that. The night carries on around them, unmoved. Steve turns his eyes toward the sky where the stars are only just visible.

“Come on,” Bucky says finally, moving toward the window. “That pie of yours should be warm by now.”

With that, he disappears back over the sill, leaving Steve nothing but to follow after him.   

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

Somewhere in Steve's files, there’s a half-baked plan. He remembers concocting it just a few days into Bucky’s sentence. He’d been up the walls with missing him and angry as all hell at the world about what it had taken from them both. They had done questionable things—even bad ones—and he knew that, but it still didn’t seem fair. Life had dealt them a poor hand to begin with. It seemed cheap that the powers that be would punish them for finding a way to play it anyway.  

So he’d sat down and sketched out an idea of how to take something back.

It’s stupid, even now—the most foolhardy thing he’s ever thought of, less of plan and more like a scheme. He and Bucky never did anything like this, and for good reason. They never had the resources, for one; something like this requires you to be financially comfortable already, which misses the whole damn point. The two of them had only ever done what they had to survive, to get the bills paid, to put food on the table.

But robbing a casino is looking more and more appealing by the second. With that kind of money in their pockets, Bucky wouldn’t be beholden to anyone anymore. He would be his own man again. And, at this point, it’s not like either of them have that much else to lose.

After two days of staring at his chicken scratch notes, Steve makes a decision. He punches number two on his speed dial.

“What’s up?” Sam answers.

“I’ve got a bad idea,” Steve says.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I think we should rob a casino.”

Sam pauses a long time. Then: “Huh.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art featured in this chapter created by [gassada](http://gassadaarts.tumblr.com/).

After a grueling few hours of trying to hash out the details of robbing the largest casino in the state, Steve and Sam collapse onto the couch. Sam and Steve had become such fast friends in college—a friendship that Bucky blamed his migraines on—mostly because Sam was never difficult to rope into something, though he liked to make his laces seem straight. He rarely got involved in Steve and Bucky’s forays into crime, though he stayed well informed for reasons Steve wasn’t always clear on. Knowing Sam, though, it didn’t come as much of a surprise that he was willing to contribute once Steve bothered to ask.

“It might be better if you tell him,” Steve says, kicking a foot onto the coffee table.

“Get your dirty socks off my table,” Sam says. He kicks Steve’s feet away and replaces them with his own. “I’m not calling him.”

“Sam, come on.”

“Look, I’m not too happy with him right now either, am I? So why me?”

“Because he hasn’t hate you.”

“He doesn’t hate you.”

“He may as well,” Steve sighs.

“I don’t even see why we have to tell him.”

“Sam,” Steve starts and breaks off. Maybe Sam has a point. It would be safer for Bucky if he wasn’t involved at all, if Steve kept this under wraps till he’d pulled it off. A lie by omission is still a lie, and if Steve were to willfully deceive Bucky like that, then where does that leave them? Exactly the same place.

“I have to at least tell him,” Steve says.

Sam considers him for a long moment. “Guess you do. Hey, maybe he’ll want to help.”

“How do I even bring it up, though?” 

“You were blunt enough with me.”

“Everything I say to him these days just seems to drive him even further away.” Steve sinks deeper into the couch, his head cradled by the cushion. “What if this makes it unsalvageable?”

“Thinking like that’s not like you. Self-pity ain’t flattering, Steve.”

Steve chews his lip. Sam is right, like usual—he’s not supposed to be the pessimist. He’s the believer. If he can’t see hope, then why is he doing this at all?

“Much as Bucky likes to complain,” Sam says, “that boy has been following you into questionable situations as long as I’ve known you. Longer, or so the legends go. Just call him. You said it yourself, what have you got to lose? The worst he could do is say he doesn’t want to be involved, in which case, we do it anyway.”

“Do we?”

“Yes.” Sam raises an eyebrow. “Unless this is all about him.”

“No, no—it’s more than that,” Steve says. “I want to do this. He’s just… the inspiration.”

“Alright, because you know that doing something like this as part of some vendetta—”

“It’s not a vendetta. It’s a heist, plain and simple.”

Sam measures a careful look at him, while Steve does his best not to squirm. It’s not that he’s lying. Everything is semantics, anyway. Sam has it all backwards; motivation doesn’t matter in the face of clear execution. Steve can keep his head down. He knows he’ll be able to set his emotions aside and get the job done, once the parts start moving. 

It’s about Bucky insofar as Bucky wants to be involved. Steve hopes that Bucky wants nothing to do with it. Another smaller, louder part of him wants the precise opposite. He does his best to quash it.

But whatever Sam sees in Steve’s face must assure him. Of what, Steve isn’t sure; his mettle, perhaps.

“We’re doing this?” Sam asks.

Steve smiles. “We’re doing this.”

 

“I’m not doing this,” Bucky says.

“Doing what?” Steve asks. Bucky had just picked up. How he already sounded like they had been arguing for half an hour, Steve had no idea. He might be impressed if he weren’t so irritated by it. “All I said is hello.”

“Steve,” Bucky exhales, punched out. “You have to let it lie, alright? You’re not doing either of us any favors.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I know you’re still… grieving. You’re only making it harder on yourself.”

Steve huffs, almost a laugh. It was stupid to call from work for a variety of reasons. If Steve had been smart about it, he would have sat down at his kitchen table with a loose script sketched out on a notepad to keep him on track. Poor planning.

“I need to tell you something,” Steve says to Bucky’s silence.

Bucky sighs, catching on a plaintive note at the end. “Kid, I told you already that we need to take this slow. ‘Slow’ isn’t you confessing—”

“No,” Steve interrupts. “Good Lord. I’m talking about something else now.”

“Oh.”

“Give me some credit, Bucky. I’m not that pitiful.”

“Right. So what is it?”

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”

“Huh. I’m off today. Could meet you for coffee.”

“Nowhere public, either.”

“Steve.” He can hear the frown in Bucky’s voice. “Where are you going with this?”

Nowhere good, Steve thinks. “Just hear me out, please.”

There’s a long pause, then: “Fine.”

“Meet me at mine later?”

“No,” Bucky says, much too quickly. “No, you come to me, if it’s gonna be like this.”

“Sure. Fair enough. I’m out of here at six.”

“I’ll send you the address.”

“You need me to pick up anything on the way?”

Bucky snorts. “Like what, Steve?”

“I don’t know.” He hadn’t meant to ask; it just felt so much like a thousand conversations before it, one of them calling on his way home. It had fallen out of his mouth like water from a faucet. “Just being polite, I guess.”

“I’m all fine on toiletries, thanks. I’ll see you later.”

 

Steve does his level best to stay focused for the rest of his workday. Maria has started to notice that he’s been slacking recently. He finds it difficult to care overmuch whether he keeps this job, but losing it probably isn’t opportune at the moment. He’s managed to hold onto it for this long, and Bucky had seemed proud of him for that. He wouldn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize even the slightest positive feeling Bucky has for him.

He helps with the install of a show going up later in the week as much as Maria will let him. She’s the type to ask for help and then micromanage till she does it all herself, so mostly he holds paintings against the wall in various arrangements till she approves. Sometimes these installs take hours; though Steve well knows how important hanging arrangements can be, he’s never known someone to be so precise about it. There’s a reason Maria is an administrator, not an artist herself.

“That’s fine for now,” Maria says, waving a hand at him.

Steve steps back to get a proper look. “It looks great.”

Maria gives him a skeptical look. “You can be honest.”

Steve bites his lip.

“I won’t fire you.”

“It just seems cluttered,” he says, gesturing at the wall. “Do we have to include all of this?”

“The artist is coming by in the morning before we reopen,” Maria says. “I’ll suggest that we don’t.”

Steve smiles. A suggestion from Maria is as good as an order.

“Anyways, Steve, get out of here,” she says.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes. “Just gotta—my stuff.”

“I think I just heard your nerves fray. What is it? Hot date?”

“Uh.” Steve laughs, mostly an exhale, and rubs at the back of his neck. “Not really.”

“I didn’t know you dated.”

“I—don’t.”

Maria raises one penciled eyebrow. “That sounds like a situation that I don’t want to know about.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, good luck.” 

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

The trains don’t run out to Bucky’s sister-in-law’s neighborhood. He takes the line as far as it goes, then decides against a bus in favor of walking. It’s not so far, really, and twenty minutes to himself might help to clear his head. It’s a cold night out. He’d been glad to have his coat returned to him, hands shoved deep into its lined pockets. The fabric had smelled faintly of lavender laundry detergent. Steve preferred a fresh cotton scent, so it seemed someone had washed it for him. It’s a cursory kindness; means nothing. He hunkers down more snugly into the collar and keeps walking.

Bucky is expecting him. He’d invited Steve here, even, though Steve understood that that was Bucky trying to retain the upper hand. As if Bucky had expected Steve to—what, try to seduce him? That was patently ridiculous. Steve knew full well that Bucky didn’t want that. He wouldn’t press it, wouldn’t even dare to suggest it. He’d had enough rejection to go around sniffing for more.

He stops through a bodega, and by the time he makes it to Penny and Curt’s narrow two-story house, it’s full dark outside. The porch light keeps him from tripping over his own toes as he takes the stairs. There’s a knocker and a bell both. He debates, conflicted, then reaches for the bell. No sound follows from inside the house when he presses the button.

The door swinging open pulls the knocker out of his fingers.

“Steve,” Bucky says from the doorway.

Steve shifts back a step. “Doorbell’s broken.”

“Yeah. Saw you coming up the street,” Bucky says, gesturing to the wide front window. “Come in, it’s cold.”

“Is that Steve?” a voice calls from somewhere in the house while Steve removes his coat. “Is he hungry?”

“We just had dinner,” Bucky explains. “There’s leftovers, if you want.”

“Oh, uh.” Steve hangs his coat on a hook by the door. “No, thanks.”

“He said no, Penny!” Bucky calls over his shoulder.

“Okay, well, if he changes his mind, let me know!” Penny shouts in return.

“Jeez,” Steve huffs. “You all yell like that across the table too?”

“Pretty much.” Bucky shrugs. “I’m upstairs.”

Bucky jerks a thumb toward the staircase across the living room, then heads for it without waiting for a response. Steve shuffles after him, sure he ought to say hello to Penny and Curt first but not wanting to get left behind. He glances over the living room as he moves across it. It’s a small space, but then again, all these old houses out this way are cramped. Penny and Curt have made good use of the space. There are family pictures along the walls, magazines spread over the table—signs that people live here. Most of the furniture looks old, like hand-me-downs, but it looks like a real home. 

The stairs creak under their combined weight. At the landing, Bucky turns toward a door on the left and pushes through.

It looks as Bucky had described over the phone. There’s a twin bed shoved against the wall, a dresser in the corner, a mirror hanging on the wall behind it. It’s spare, which Steve supposes makes sense, since it’s meant to be a guest room. He’d expected Bucky to put some mark on it, if he’s really been here as long as he says. Perhaps it’s in an effort to ensure this is only temporary, but Steve can’t help but feel sad at the blandness of it all. It’s so cramped, too, with barely enough floor space to navigate between furniture. 

It reminds him of his own apartment. They’ve both been living in halfway homes.

“You staying or going?’ Bucky asks from where he’s standing by the bed.

“Staying.” Steve flickers back to life, reaching for the door handle. “Closed?”

“Whatever makes you comfortable, kid.”

“Buck.”

“Just shut it, then.”

The door closes with a quiet snick. “So, um,” Steve says. “Where should I sit?”

Bucky plunks down onto the edge of the bed and waves broadly at the floor. “Take your pick.”

With a measured exhale, Steve eases onto the carpet right where he stands, putting his back to the door. A lamp from a side table by the bed provides the only light in the room. The lace curtains, pulled back from the window, look as if they might disintegrate at the gentlest touch. Steve pulls his knees up and rests his forearms against them. Bucky sits so stiffly on the bed he may as well be on the floor, too.

“You said you had something to tell me,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. With a jolt, he reaches for his front pocket and draws something out, tossing it to Bucky. “Got you something anyway.”

Bucky catches it between two hands. “Spearmint gum?”

“Your favorite.”

“Trying to get in my good graces?”

“It working?”

“No,” Bucky says, but he tears open the pack and unwraps a piece. Steve can smell it from here. Bucky pops the piece into his mouth, then holds the pack out for Steve, who holds up his hands and shakes his head. “So,” Bucky continues, chewing, “what’s the problem?”

“Why would you assume there’s a problem?”

“Just a hunch. You seem nervous.”

“Maybe you’re making me nervous.”

“Don’t flirt. You need help with something?”

“No, it’s—”

“I don’t exactly have much to offer.” Bucky glances around the room, as if to illustrate.

Steve frowns. “Sure you do. You’ve got plenty to offer.”

“Christ,” Bucky mutters. “Get to the point already. What is it?”

“Well, Sam and I have this idea, you see.”

“Oh, you and Sam have an idea, huh? Count me out.”

“Aw, Bucky, c’mon. I’m not trying to wrangle you, just listen to me.”

“Fine,” Bucky grunts. “What is it? Real estate venture? Cross-country road trip?”

“No,” Steve says. “We’re planning a heist.”

There’s a pause; then Bucky bursts out laughing, slapping his hand to his knee. If he weren’t being laughed at, Steve might think it was nice to see Bucky smile so broadly. He waits it out, expression patient. Slowly, a pinch develops between Bucky’s brows. He sobers, breathing deep. The smile slips off his face, replaced by a disbelieving scowl.

“You can’t be serious,” Bucky says.

“As a heart attack.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s true.”

“You’re not that stupid.”

Steve rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, his head thunking back against the door.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re exactly that stupid. Holy shit.”

“Go on, get it all out.”

Bucky spits his gum into his hand, then slaps it to the top of the nightstand. He launches off the bed, suddenly towering over Steve. “Weren’t you the one so torn up about me being in jail? Now you want to commit more crime? What the fuck is this, The Twilight Zone?”

“Thought you said I shouldn’t beat myself up about that anymore.”

“Yeah, but you and I both know that me saying that doesn’t mean shit to you.”

Steve’s mouth twitches downward. “Everything you say means shit to me.”

“Oh, whatever, don’t try to charm me. Not only is this stupid, it’s hypocritical. You’ll get yourself locked up worse than me if you fuck the up.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Where is this even coming from?” Bucky demands, crossing his arms over his chest. From his place on the floor, Steve has to crane his neck to look up at him. “Why do you want this?”

Steve sags against the door, dropping his eyes to Bucky’s knees so he can think without wondering whether he’ll catch fire from the heat in his gaze. It won’t take long for Bucky to sniff out Steve’s true motivations once he’s told him any details, but maybe he can delay that a little longer.

“Do I need a reason?” he says.

“If you don’t have one, that’s triple the stupid. Is it just the money?”

“Of course.”

Bucky knows his tells. “Bullshit.”

“Why can’t it just be about the money? Maybe I want a chance to start fresh, this could help.”

Bucky’s foot taps out an angry rhythm on the carpet. He doesn’t have shoes or even socks on; Steve can see the hair curling on his big toes. “Okay. Fine. I still think you’re lying, for the record, but we’ll move on. Why are you telling me about this?”

“Can you sit down with me?” Steve asks. “I’m going to get a crick in my neck looking at you.”

“Then get up.”

“Floor’s comfortable.” Steve pats the carpet with a palm. Bucky mutters something unpleasant under his breath. “Please, just level with me for a minute, okay?”

Bucky sinks to the floor in a tense heap, his legs folded underneath him. His arms at still crossed, and his face is steely. He inclines his head, though, indicating Steve should continue.

“If we’re ever going to… fix this” —Steve’s jaw works— “and be... friends, then we’ve got to be honest with each other. I don’t want to hide anything from you, so I’m telling you. Plain as that.”

Bucky’s teeth dig hard into his lip, as if he might break the skin, but then he lets it pop free. His hands fiddle in his lip. It’s clear from the deep lines in his forehead that he’s considering something. Steve waits, patient as he knows how to be, with his foot resting against Bucky’s knee. Bucky had pushed it away.

“Are you asking for my help?” Bucky says.

“Am I—no. No, I’m not asking for your help. I mean, you’re the best partner I ever had, but I wouldn’t… No.”

“I’m the only partner you ever had.”

Steve snorts, conceding the point.

Bucky doesn’t share in the humor, instead staring a hole in the carpet. “Would you call this off if I asked you to?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “Probably not.”

“If I offered help, would you take it?”

Steve inhales sharply, taken aback. He hadn’t expected… But of course Bucky would want to help. That’s how the two of them operated; Steve had the ideas, and Bucky handled the execution. They’ve been in that pattern since long before they could recognize it as such. 

They make a good team. Part of Steve thrills to imagine them doing this together. The longer he lets the silence stretch, the more dominant that part becomes and then, suddenly, he can’t think of doing this without him. He can’t ask him to do that, not after everything. The risk is so high—but Bucky is a gambling man.

“Only—only if you were sure,” Steve says.

Bucky’s eyes flick to Steve’s face and bore into him. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Steve blinks, for half a second the picture of innocence, but he knows what the next question is before Bucky asks it. He braces himself against the door.

“What’s the mark?” Bucky says.

“The Wyvern.”

“Oh, you mother fucker,” Bucky hisses, on his feet again in an instant. “Get out.”

“Bucky—”

“What got that particular idea into your head, Steve, hm?” Bucky leans down toward him, his expression murderous. “I know what you’re trying to pull, and I don’t want any part of it. Get the hell out of my room.”

Steve scrambles to standing, his hands raised in defiance. “Look, I know, but just listen to me.”

“I’ve had about enough for today, thanks.”

“Bucky?”

They both freeze. That’s Penny, calling from the stairs. Bucky grabs Steve by the shoulder and yanks him away from the door so he can crack it open by an inch. “Yeah, Penny?”

“Curt and I are winding down for the night. Do you need anything?”

“No, we’re fine. Thank you.”

“Is Steve staying? You know the couch downstairs pulls out—”

“He’s leaving soon.”

“Oh, well, he doesn’t have to, you know? We don’t mind. There’s plenty of food.”

“Penny,” Bucky says, very carefully, “it’s not like that. He’s not staying.”

“Huh. Only your ma said—”

“I don’t have to guess. But it’s not true. He’ll be leaving any minute now.”

“Okay,” Penny says, and the stairs creak. “Just know you don’t have to hurry on our account. Goodnight, Bucky.”

“Goodnight, Penny, thank you,” Bucky says. He shuts the door again and leans his forehead against it, his eyes closed. “Jesus fuck.”

“Bucky?”

“You need to go.”

“We’re not done talking.”

“Yes,” Bucky says, straightening up. His eyes flash to Steve’s, and Steve realizes they’re standing much too close. “We are.”

Steve plants his feet. “You’ll have to throw me out.”

From this close, Steve can feel Bucky’s breath as it gusts out. “You think I wouldn’t?”

“I think you don’t want to cause a fuss in front of Curt and Penny.”

“What else is there to even talk about? How you need to get your head checked?”

Steve closes his eyes and will himself to stay quiet for just a moment. Christ, but he has fucked this up. The conversation was doomed to go south at some point, but he hadn’t expected Bucky to react so apoplectically. Maybe that was his own fault, though.

“Look,” Steve says softly. “The Wyvern is a good target, no matter my motivations. There’s a lot of money to be made here.”

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

Steve blinks his eyes open. “You really have so little faith in me?”

“You give me stress ulcers, kid, but I’m less worried about you than—”

“Pierce.”

“You don’t know him. He would ruin you, Steve.”

“Has he ruined you?”

Bucky’s stormy expression turns darker, and his eyes drop to the floor. “This is a big risk,” he says.

“So I’ll take my time. Make sure there’s no chance this goes poorly.”

“That’s not realistic. There are so many variables.”

“I’ll account for all of them.” When Bucky still looks unconvinced, Steve takes a chance and reaches for him. To Steve’s utter bewilderment, Bucky lets him lay a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll remind you that you promised you would consider this.”

“I said I’d—” Bucky sighs. “This is what I meant, when I said that.”

“Well, this is my plan, honey. Think of what money like that could do for you.”

“Christ,” Bucky says, still looking impossibly torn. Steve’s hand still gentles at the soft material of Bucky’s long-sleeve. Bucky’s head drops, then his whole body shifts toward Steve, almost of its own volition, and sags against his chest. Steve frowns but wraps him in an embrace anyway, keeping him close. Bucky doesn’t hug him back, still rigid as steel, but that’s okay. This is more than Steve would have dared believe Bucky would ask for from him.

“Don’t do anything yet,” Bucky says into Steve’s collarbone. “Just… wait a minute, okay?” 

“Bucky?”

“You know what I mean.”

Steve’s heart thumps heavily, and he wonders if Bucky can hear it. “Okay,” he murmurs. “I’ll wait.”

“It’s getting late.”

“Yeah.” Steve pulls back enough to meet his eye. Bucky’s face is softer now, even if he still looks guarded. “Yeah, I should head back.”

“You’ll be okay walking to the station?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t know this neighborhood.”

“I’ll be fine, Bucky.”

“It’s a ways away.”

Steve quirks an eyebrow. “You worried about me?”

Bucky smacks him in the chest. His hand lingers, fisting in Steve’s button-down. “I’m always worried about you, sweetheart.”

“Why’s that?”

“Don’t ask me,” Bucky says, dropping his hand. “Because you’ve got no sense. I’ll walk you.”

“To the—the station?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “The door, unless you think you need the protecting.”

“I don’t.”

“’Course you don’t. Go on.”

Bucky follows him down the stairs, both of them mindful of the creaking steps. Outside on the porch, Steve fiddles with the buttons of his coat while Bucky leans against the door, his arms crossed. He’s still not wearing any socks.

“Be careful,” Bucky says.

“I will,” Steve promises.

Bucky’s jaw works, like he has something else to say.

“What?” Steve asks.

“Nothing,” Bucky says, then shrugs away from the door. “Your buttons aren’t aligned right. Here.”

Though his left hand is obviously stiff, Bucky undoes the buttons of Steve’s coat and refastens them so they line up correctly. He keeps his eyes down while he does it. His breath is whispy vapor in the cold night air. He must be freezing, out here without so much as a sweater or jacket.

“Thanks,” Steve says.

“Yeah.” Bucky waves a hand at him. “Get out of here. Call me when you’re home.”

“Will do.” As he turns away from Bucky toward the street, Steve’s smile blooms wider, tentative but real, knowing what Bucky means when he says 'wait.'

It means he's in. Steve would bet money on it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reblog the artwork on tumblr here!


	6. Chapter 6

The storage unit Steve rents is all the way out at a sprawling place in Brighton Beach. He’d had to rent a van to get everything down there. This time, he settles for borrowing Sam’s seldom-used car that he keeps at his mom’s place outside the city. It’s a schlep, taking a train up to Rockland County and then driving south again, through half of Manhattan to reach the southernmost point of Brooklyn. It takes half the day; he has to be particularly careful on the drive back, since he’s driving on an expired license. He’d never bothered renewing the one he’d gotten ten years ago as a teenager, since it was practically useless in the city. The scrawny, pink-cheeked 17-year-old in the photo hardly even looks like him anymore. But he’d wanted one, then, so he’d gotten it. He still carries it in his wallet.

Steve doesn’t mind the drive so much, truth be told. He can’t call it peaceful, not in this city’s traffic, but it takes his full concentration to make it safely down Fulton Avenue. It’s a welcome relief from being tied up in knots over his silent phone again.

Bucky hasn’t spoken to him since that night at his sister-in-law’s. That was two weeks ago. Steve is beginning to think he may not hear from him again at all, much less about the plan.

So—the long haul is a welcome distraction.

The lock on the unit sticks so badly that Steve has to find an attendant to help him pry it open. It takes a generous application of WD-40 and putting their backs into it, but eventually, Steve and the attendant do get the door up. The hinges still squeal awfully.

“Damn, man, don’t you ever open this thing?” the attendant asks.

“Thanks for the help,” Steve mutters.

“Yeah,” the guy says. “Ask at the office if you need anything else.”

As the attendant retreats up the long aisle of identical shuttered doors, Steve turns toward the wide cavity of his own unit. It looks precisely the same as he’d left it some two years prior. There’s not so much as a coating of dust, thanks to the airtight door. In the weak sunlight of late autumn, haphazard stacks of boxes crowd the foreground. Extra furniture hulks in the back. Steve’s old easel is shoved in here somewhere, along with all of his supplies. He wonders if the temperature control had really kept his paints from going bad, like the saleswoman had promised him it would.

Bucky’s things are in here, too, somewhere.

Steve flicks on the light switch to see better into the unit’s recesses. Then he starts to dig.

After he gets everything piled into the front hall of his apartment—just inside enough to shut the door—it’s back up to Rockland County to return Sam’s car. Sam’s mom winds up pushing dinner onto him. He’s never been much good at saying no to things like that, so it’s late by the time he makes it back to his own neighborhood in Brooklyn. He navigates through the maze he’d left for himself with some difficulty, stops by the kitchen for a glass of water, then heads directly for bed. He’s too tired to get into any of it tonight.

The problem, he’d discovered yesterday and is reassessing while he waits for coffee to brew early the next morning, is that he hadn’t sorted anything when he’d thrown it into boxes. The disorder reminds him once again that he had assumed all of this was temporary—that when he was able to unpack these boxes, he would still remember what each one contained.

But he’s forgotten, and there’s no sense to it at all. The first box he had opened back in the storage room yesterday held kitchenware, two sets of sheets, and a few assorted paperbacks. None of that had even come from the same  _ room. _

Steve had eventually made a hopeful guess about which boxes contained what he wanted and shoved as many as he could into the car. Now it all feels like too much. After he’s had a first cup of coffee and checked his voice mail again—empty—Steve plunks onto the floor in the hallway with a fresh mug in hand, determined to make a dent.

It’s slow going. Bucky’s things are dispersed like shrapnel through every box, sharp-edged each time Steve unearths some shirts or a stack of old journals or whatever the hell other junk he’d amassed over the years. Seeing it all tossed together with his own things, as if maybe it all really did go together, starts to make Steve’s head ache dully after a while.

It’ll stop feeling so awful soon, Steve keeps telling himself. This slow suffocation can’t last forever. He tells himself, and he tells himself, then he finds a picture of them grinning at the camera from the couch of their old living room—and he tells himself again.

It takes a few hours and an entire pot of coffee, but eventually Steve has a modest pile of Bucky’s things crowding his dining table. Reluctantly, he adds the few items he’d kept for himself to the pile, too—all Bucky’s favorites, things he’d be certain to miss.

Everything else he shoves wherever he can find space for it, but that had been the point of the storage unit in the first place. There simply wasn’t enough room. He gives up after a while and arranges all the clutter and boxes into a maze easy enough to navigate.

Steve showers once he’s done, then tosses on a ragged old t-shirt and a pair of briefs. He checks his phone again, then shoves it into the couch cushions. Jesus. How is it barely one in the afternoon?

He’d brought his easel home, too. It looms in the corner of the living room, imposing as a dark figure in an alleyway. Steve eyes it warily, stonily, the same way he'd sized up every opponent in his backstreet scrapping days.

He won’t let this one get the better of him, either. He finds the box with his art supply kit in it, digs out a standard-size canvas he’d shoved into the back of a closet when he moved in. With the canvas propped in the easel and an idea lodged in his head, Steve grabs his laptop to search for a reference image. It’s easy enough; he’d had it bookmarked already. Once he has what he’s looking for, he sets to work.

Everything flows more easily than he’d dared believe possible. Muscle memory can be funny that way; the body remembers better than the conscious mind. He hasn’t so much as picked up a paint brush in more than a year. He’d tried, in the early days of Bucky’s sentence, but each time all his mind churned out at him was static. It had felt wrong. Steve had assumed it would be just as difficult now, if not more so. He’d expected to have to give up after a frustrating half hour and find something else to do. But it’s like the paint is pouring out of him, the connection between his hands and the canvas strong as the current of a river. It hasn’t felt like this since his first semester of art school. The spark had faded somewhere along the way.

Scared of losing it again, he works till he can’t anymore, till he’s forced to stop to let layers dry. He sets his palette aside and backs off, almost stumbling like he’s been flung backward.

It looks goddamn good, so far. A perfect recreation. He smiles faintly.

The daylight had abandoned him at some point during his stupor. His stomach grumbles, reminding him he’s barely eaten all day. It’s Sunday; he wonders whether Freddie had tried to call him. It’s not as if he would have been able to say yes if she had, though. After cobbling together something hearty for dinner, he heads to bed early, the stink of oil paints lingering in his nose. He’d missed that smell more than he’d known.

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

The rest of the week is a blur of productivity. Even at work he’s on top of his game—so much so that Maria swings by mid-morning on Thursday with half a smile and a fresh cup of coffee for him.

“Does this have anything to do with your, uh, thing the other week?” she asks, lingering in his doorway with her own steaming mug.

Steve’s eyebrows pinch together.  “Are you asking me about my personal life?”

Maria’s mouth twists. “God, am I? Forget I said anything.”

Steve chuckles, turning back to his work.

“Well, whatever the reason, keep it up,” Maria says.

“I’ll try my best.”

With a little salute, Maria disappears back down the hallway. Steve is happy to have ducked her question so easily. Truthfully, he hadn’t bothered to question what had triggered all this, worried that if he poked too hard, the bubble might burst. There’s a nearly finished painting drying on the easel at home; he’d gotten up early to fiddle with the details. A few more touches, a coat of varnish—it’ll be done. He knows what he’s working on after this one, too. Having a trajectory, something to _ do, _ makes it easier to forget that Bucky still hasn’t called. That he hasn’t so much as texted.

Not that Steve really forgets. But it’s nice to be distracted, all the same.

Sam calls him after he gets home that night.

“You hear from him yet?” Sam asks.

“No,” Steve sighs.

“Damn. Did he bolt?”

“I don’t think so,” Steve says. “I think… Well.”

“What?”

“I would have thought he might tell me this time, if he was going to. I like to believe that he would.”

Sam exhales slowly over the line. “So why exactly did he ask us to wait again?”

“I told you, he’s thinking.”

“Are you going to let him help, if he's gonna help?”

“Well, it’s—I know I probably shouldn’t, right? But it’s not like I can tell him to butt out now. It’s his decision to make. He’d be a big help.”

“How much longer are you going to give him?”

“I don't want to push him. There’s a lot to consider.”

“He usually doesn’t take this long, though.”

Steve scrubs a hand over his face. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Well, in the meantime, maybe we should—” 

“Sam.”

“What? Waiting around makes me antsy.”

“Well, I told him we would wait. Do you think you’re going to back out if he takes too long?”

Sam barks a laugh. “Yeah, fat chance.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Steve asks, flipping the lock on the window in the living room so he can get some air circulating. Paint fumes aren’t good for anyone’s lungs, much less his, which are still wheezy on occasion from too many respiratory infections as a kid. “I didn’t expect you to be so eager about this.”

“I’m just getting impatient,” Sam sighs. “Should I call him?”

“No,” Steve says sharply. “Just give him time.”

“It’s been two weeks. He’s had time.”

“Jesus, Sam. This is a huge decision for him.”

Sam is quiet for a long time. “Steve,” Sam says slowly, “I still feel like there’s something about this you’re not telling me.”

Steve inhales through his nose. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know, just a feeling. Maybe that’s why I’m so anxious to hear if we’re a-go.”

“I’ve told you everything you need to know,” Steve says, frowning hard at a loose thread in the carpet.

“Alright,” Sam says after a beat. “Fine. But you’ll keep me in the loop, right?”

Steve opens his mouth to answer, but a soft knock at the front door makes him freeze in place. He whips his head around, squinting at the door as if he might be able to see through it. The sound had been so quiet he’s not sure he wasn’t making it up.

“Steve?” Sam asks.

“Shh,” Steve says.

The knock comes again, louder this time. The pattern is distinct:  _ thunk, tap-tap-tap. _

“Sam, I gotta go,” Steve says, already standing up from the coffee table.

“What?”

“Bucky’s at the door.”

“Oh,” Sam gasps. “Shit. Let me know what he says—”

“Yeah, call you later.” Steve disconnects the call before Sam has time to respond. He’ll have to apologize for that later, he knows, but right now he doesn’t care. He weaves through the clutter of boxes in the hall, his heart thudding heavily in his chest, and stops with his hand on the deadbolt. He shouldn’t open this door looking like he’s been waiting for deliverance. Three slow breaths to calm himself, then he flips the lock, reaching for the handle with his other hand to fling the door open.

He didn’t need to worry, apparently. Bucky stands in the hallway, looking just as frazzled as Steve feels. The windy day spun his hair into a mess. There are hectic spots of color high on his cheeks, and above them, his blue eyes shine bright.

He looks like he ran here. He looks beautiful. Steve forgets to say hello.

“Okay,” Bucky says.

Steve frowns. “Huh?”

“Okay,” Bucky repeats. “I want to help.”

“Oh!” Steve gasps, springing back to life. He sags into a less rigid stance, though he’s not quite relaxed. “You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Bucky’s eyes flash, irritated. “Do I look like I’m not?”

“You look nervous as hell.”

“Yeah, well, move out of the doorway. We should talk.”

Steve steps aside. It’s only as Bucky passes by him that he remembers the mess inside. “Um,” he starts, but Bucky has already spun around to face him again, eyebrows high.

“What’s all this?”

“Just boxes,” Steve says. “There’s a path, go on.”

After a beat of staring, Bucky spins on his heel to lead the way toward the living room. Bucky has never been here before, Steve realizes. He had known that, of course, but he’d never thought of it consciously. How odd, that he could have spent so much time somewhere that Bucky doesn’t know at all, doesn’t even know where the bathroom is.

He navigates it easily enough. It’s not as if the layout is complicated. It’s good to see him here—he’s always lit up a room.

“Oh,” Bucky says when he reaches the living room, his voice just a soft rush of air.

Steve eases around him into the room and stops short again. Shit. There’s a lot to explain.

“You’re painting again?” Bucky asks. He drifts toward the easel like it’s called out to him. His fingers flutter toward the canvas, but he doesn’t touch, even as he leans in to have a closer look. He’s known for a long time how to be careful around artwork, especially the unfinished kind. Steve almost smiles to see him take such care.

“Sort of,” he mumbles.

“How can you sort of be painting?” Bucky throws a look over his shoulder, then turns back to the delicate seascape. “This looks like paint to me.”

“I mean, they’re forgeries,” Steve says. “Easing myself back into it, y’know.”

“Oh.” Bucky’s tone shifts, edging toward suspicious. “Forgeries of anything in particular?”

Steve has thrown enough harebrained ideas at Bucky lately, and he’s only barely convinced him of robbing a casino. He’s not about toss out an errant dream of stealing Pierce’s art collection out from under his nose, too. 

“We’re not talking about me,” Steve says.

Bucky straightens and turns to look at him. He smooths his hair back from his face with one gloved hand, and something in him seems to settle by a few degrees. His eyes are still too wide, though.

“’Course we’re talking about you,” Bucky says. “This mess we’re about to get ourselves into is your plan, isn’t it?”

Steve grimaces, but nods.

“Having second thoughts?” Bucky prompts.

Steve’s eyes find his. “None,” he says, his voice sure.

Bucky hums a skeptical note, casting his eyes about the rest of the bland room. There’s no judgment in his face, but Steve wonders what he’s thinking anyway. There aren’t many good thoughts to be had about the apartment itself, much less the way Steve lives in it.

“You must have doubts,” Steve says, “or it wouldn’t have taken you so long.”

“Can you come over here?” Bucky says, crossing his arms. “I don’t like talking to you all the way across a room.”

Steve shuffles around the couch to face him properly, feeling oddly self-conscious about his state of dress. He’d changed into paint-stained sweats when he’d gotten home. Next to Bucky’s clean-cut clothes, Steve is sure he looks awful. But that shouldn’t matter—not right now.

“Of course I have doubts,” Bucky says quietly. His eyes are focused somewhere behind Steve’s head.

“Like what?” Steve asks. Should they sit? He opens his mouth again to offer, but Bucky turns away from him before he can. He leans toward the window, peering between the blinds.

“It won’t be easy,” Bucky says.

“I never expected it to be.”

Bucky’s shoulders lift and sag on his breath. “Pierce is no idiot. It’s going to be goddamn difficult, and expensive to boot.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“We’re going to need more help. This is more than a three-person job.”

“We have connections. Our connections have connections.”

“The more people we involve, the more money we’ll need to make off with, or it won’t be worth it.”

“We’ll get plenty of money, Bucky.”

“Then there’s the chance,” Bucky says, his voice tighter, “that we fuck up and get caught again.”

“I know,” Steve whispers.

“Do you?” Bucky turns to him, and neither his face nor his voice are accusatory. Mostly he looks worried. “If we go down for this, it’ll be a lot longer than two years, Steve. Pierce has a lot of connections, I’m telling you—he’s a spider with a web so big you’d be shocked to know. If he catches so much as a whiff, we’re fucked. He’ll know it’s us.”

“I’m counting on it,” Steve says.

Bucky’s face darkens. “Steve,” he warns, “you don’t want that.”

“Why not? He’s hurt you, Bucky.”

“And you think you want to hurt him back?” Bucky’s mouth twists into a grim smile. “Everything he has is insured, Steve. This isn’t going to put a dent in him, you know that, right?”

Steve’s eyes drift toward the easel. “His money’s not all he values.”

“Stop it,” Buck says, raising his voice. He takes three quick steps toward Steve, closing the distance between them to only a handful of inches. “Cut it out, right now, or I’m backing out.”

“I can hate him. Nothing you say can stop me from hating him.”

“But I don’t have to listen to it. Keep that shit to yourself. This is impersonal. It only works if it’s impersonal.”

Steve grinds his teeth, reminded of Sam, who had told him something similar. Why did everyone think he would fuck this up if he was emotionally involved? Bucky can spout being impersonal all he wants, but like hell he actually feels that way. This plan is as much a chance to free him from Pierce’s control as it is anything else. He might hide that from anyone else, but this is Bucky, who always sees straight through him. There’s no point.

“I won’t lie to you,” Steve says. “I can pretend if that’s what you want, but we both know this is about you.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Your… intensity, it isn’t going to help us, Rogers.” Bucky drops his head, staring at the floor. “It’s not like I’m stupid. I know you’re doing this for me. That’s why it took me so long to decide to help.”

Steve’s chest constricts. “Bucky.”

“I shouldn’t let you do this,” Bucky says, his eyes flicking up to Steve’s. “If I had any sense, I’d say no.”

“But?”

“But,” Bucky croaks. He folds in on himself. “I want out. I need out.”

He means with Pierce—Pierce's job, Bucky's work for him. Steve’s voice is rough when he says, “Then we’ll get you out.”

“This is dangerous. We have to be careful.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Bucky’s voice pitches higher. “It’s like you think you’re invincible sometimes, Steve. I don’t—I can’t let you get hurt trying to help me. I can’t.”

“Isn’t that my choice?”

Bucky’s eyes are steady on his. “I suppose it’d be hypocritical of me to say anything but yes.”

“Are you?” Steve asks. “Are you saying yes?”

Steve can tell that Bucky knows Steve isn’t talking about himself anymore. Bucky’s shoulders rise and fall on a heavy breath, once, then again.

“So long as you focus, so long as from here on out this is about the job only,” Bucky says, “then I’m saying yes.”

The smile that flits over Steve’s face is there and gone in half a second, but Bucky catches it. His eyes narrow.

“I mean it, Rogers. This moment forward.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, nodding. “Yes. I know.”

“What do you know?”

“Shit, I’m not a child, Bucky.”

“Just repeat it, so I know we’re square.”

Steve shuts his eyes for a moment. They’re still so close he can smell Bucky’s spearmint breath. “It’s about the job,” he says, “from here on out.”

Bucky relaxes, warily satisfied. “That’s right. Thank you.”

“Are you hungry?” Steve asks, eager to change the subject for at least a few minutes.

Bucky squints at him. “I—Steve.”

“It’s just food, Buck, that’s all. It’s seven o’clock, so I thought I’d offer.”

Bucky’s eyes lose some of the apprehension. “Fine.”

“Great,” Steve says, “I’ve got canned soup.”

“Wow, tasty,” Bucky says flatly, but follows after as Steve heads for the kitchen.

“Oh, uh,” Steve breathes. He waves a hand at the table. “Clothes and things of yours. Um. Take what you want. There are spare boxes, if you need one.”

“Hey, thanks,” Bucky mumbles, curving toward the table. His hands flutter over the neat piles like he’s unsure he’s allowed to touch. Steve should have had the forethought to clear all that away for after dinner. They’ll either be sitting on the couch or eating over artifacts from Bucky’s pre-prison life.

“Chicken noodle?” Steve asks. “I’ve got some bread too.”

“Huh? Oh, sure.”

Steve pours the soup into a pot and sets that on the stove to heat up. The bread goes into the toaster oven to crisp. That done, he has nothing left but to turn and watch Bucky sort through his things. He’s carefully refolding a shirt. Steve remembers that one—well-worn, deep red. Bucky had worn it to sleep sometimes, even though it wasn’t technically pajamas.

“Is this everything?” Bucky asks, glancing at Steve.

“No,” Steve says. “Just what I’ve dug out so far. I might’ve missed some things in these boxes, and there are more in the unit. I can give you a key, if you want to go by yourself sometime.”

“Hm,” Bucky says. His face is strange, wobbling. “Maybe.”

“We’ll—I’ll get it all back to you.” Steve swallows. “I promise.”

“It’s okay. It’s not like I don’t know how to live without it by now.”

“Still. It’s yours. You should have it back.”

The pinch between Bucky’s brows deepens as he finally looks at Steve full in the face. “I’m sorry. I know this is miserable for you.”

“Don’t apologize,” Steve says, shaking his head, even though Bucky is right.

Bucky drops his eyes and grabs for a hoodie—the green one from Acadia, from that vacation they’d taken. An eight hour drive, one way. He presses the soft material to his cheek and inhales deep. Steve almost feels he should avert his eyes, with the pained look that comes over Bucky’s face.

“That toast burning?” Bucky says eventually, pulling the hoodie on.

“Shit,” Steve mutters, spinning toward the toaster oven. He pulls the bread out with bare fingers, wincing as it falls to the counter. “We’re good.”

“Jesus, Rogers, is burning your fingertips off part of the plan?”

Steve can’t help the smile that pulls at his cheeks. “Maybe.”

“God, you’re a moron. Don’t know what I ever saw in you.”

“Probably my killer ass.”

“Yeah, that was it.” Bucky rolls his eyes, still chuckling. Steve struggles through a laugh, too. The energy of the room has turned a weird color. He can see it the moment Bucky picks up on it, his face falling. “Anyway,” he says, “we should eat that soup before you burn it, too.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Steve fixes them bowls and butters their toast. They wind up settled at the counter, standing a few feet apart with spoons in their hands. It’s not the most comfortable way to eat, and hardly the least awkward, but it saves them both from having to look at Bucky’s things any more than they have to.

“So,” Bucky says, voice light like he’s trying to salvage the mood. “I hope you’ve got more than a vague idea for me to work with.”

“Yeah,” Steve says around his bread crust. He wipes his mouth with a napkin before trying again. “Sam and I have some notes. I’ll show them to you after we eat.”

“Okay.”

They’re quiet for a few moments, both chewing.

“We’ll need a backer,” Bucky says.

Steve sighs. “I know.”

“There’s always—”

“Ugh.”

“Steve.” Bucky points his spoon at Steve’s nose. “I know you don’t like him, but—”

“He hates my guts, too.”

“That’s not true. You’ve only met the guy two or three times, how would you know that?”

“Well, it’s not like it matters. He’s not going to go for it if we’re involved. Or are you forgetting that you don’t get along with him, either?”

Bucky stirs his soup thoughtfully. “If Natasha is on board, Stark will be, too.”

“True.” Steve snorts. “But I haven’t spoken to Natasha since you got arrested. I have no idea where she is, much less how to reach her.”

“I can call her,” Bucky says softly.

The room stills. Steve’s spoon clatters against the side of the bowl. “You’ve been in contact with her?”

Bucky bites his lip.

“Was I the last person on the entire planet to know?” Steve can feel his face contorting into something awful. “Dammit, Bucky, look at me. Is everyone lying to me these days?”

“How could she lie to you?” Bucky seems to be refusing to rise to Steve’s anger. He’s still hunched over the counter, stiff and quiet. “You just said you haven’t spoken to her.”

“It’s the fucking principle of the thing!”

Bucky’s eyes shut tight, and he pushes his bowl away, unfinished. “I was going to tell you, you know.”

“Were you?”

Bucky whirls on him. “Yeah, Steve, I was. Stop making out like all this means I don’t care about you. I needed to do it for my own sake. We’ve known each other since we were seven years old—that’s twenty  _ years, _ Steve, that you and I have been attached at the hip. Forgive me for wanting to figure out what it feels like to be on my own for a while.”

Steve feels like he’s been punched—or like maybe he could throw one. His hand is fisted around something. Loosening his fingers, he realizes it’s the toast; the crumbs fall to the floor like dust. He turns away, hands gripping the edge of the counter, and curls in on himself, ashamed.

“We can’t stop fighting about this,” he says. “Fuck.”

He hears Bucky sigh, ragged. “Guess I know what clarity costs now.”

“Was it worth it?”

“I—I don’t know, Steve. I really don’t.”

“You should go,” Steve rasps.

“Um. Right. Are we—”

“I’ll call you about the plans tomorrow.” Steve’s fingernails dig into the grout. “I can’t handle any more tonight.”

“Steve,” Bucky says quietly, “are we—I mean, we’re going to be okay, right?”

Steve could almost laugh, but he doesn’t want to be cruel. He thinks he understands why Bucky did what he did, even if it still makes him feel rotten. Fighting about it only makes the knife twist deeper. If they’re ever going to move past this—and Steve still wants that, still wants him, despite everything—then they have to learn to forgive each other. Steve thought he had, but maybe that isn’t true.

But whatever Bucky’s reservations may be, this must matter to him. He does still care—in whatever capacity. 

Steve straightens and faces Bucky. It’s hard to meet his eye just now, but he manages. “One of these days,” Steve says, and he still believes himself. “Sure.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art featured in this chapter created by [gassada](http://gassadaarts.tumblr.com/post/178984169108/guess-who-makes-the-worst-decisions-painted-by).

The North Cove Marina is a neat paddock of luxury, sitting pretty at the edge of downtown Manhattan. Each boat along its docks is bigger than the last till they’re hardly boats at all and more like floating penthouses. Yachts, Steve supposes, is the proper word—megayachts even. People can do what they want with their money. It’s probably nice, to have a vessel like this, to be able to set sail and leave everything behind. Steve wouldn’t know; he’s only ever been on ferries, and those are decidedly less grandiose. Practicality versus excess. Even if they do pull this off, he’d never spend the money on something like this. That doesn’t necessarily make him a better person than Tony Stark, but it sure feels that way sometimes.

But Steve’s the one who’s at Stark’s expensive dock about to beg for money, so he doesn’t have much room to talk.

He won’t be alone for long. He’d hauled ass across Brooklyn and into the city after Maria had cut him loose earlier than usual. So for now, he lingers along the waterfront, the sharp wind off the Hudson River ruffling his hair. It’s really much too cold for yachting, he thinks, but it’s about as private a place as he could have hoped to meet.

The others will be along soon. Sam, Natasha, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner—and Bucky, of course. The team they had managed to put together in the past month feels a little crackpot, too many big personalities to harmonize. Steve trusts Natasha’s judgment—most of these people are her connections—but he is nervous about getting them all in the same place for the first time.

He guesses, though, you’d have to be a least a little eccentric to agree to robbing one of New York’s most high-flying businessmen.

Steve sighs, leaning his elbows on the railing overlooking the river. His watch says he’s still ridiculously early. It’ll be another half hour before any of them show their faces, and another hour before the meeting even really begins. “Tony’s very particular,” Natasha had explained. By that she meant peculiar; the flighty billionaire, a mockery among New York’s social scene, but Stark Industries led the pack in innovation and its associated foundation has done a lot of good in the world. By all accounts, Stark should be Pierce’s peer, but here they were. “He likes to put on a bit of show,” Natasha had said. “Just let him; he’ll be more amenable if you do.”

Seeing Natasha Romanov again had been… well, Steve’s not sure how to describe it. She’s always been cryptic and private, so after he had time to calm down, he supposed he couldn’t exactly blame her for never reaching out to him. She had said she was going to lie low. But she had seemed happy to see him when he and Bucky met her in Prospect Park. All it had taken was a phone call from Bucky, and she’d appeared like a mirage in the desert.

Steve tries not to think too hard about why that might be. Why she’s so willing to work with them again, after last time. It’s all ridiculous conjecture; he knows it’s not true. Natasha and Bucky have always been close in a way that Steve just wasn’t privy to. He could say the same about Sam and himself, and he definitely wasn’t sleeping with Sam.

He and Bucky had been… better, recently. They were both making more of an effort. To what end, Steve hadn’t figured out yet; friendship, he supposes. They’d been only friends for a long time before. Surely they could find their way back to that, if they wanted to. Steve wants to.

Everything had been stilted and awkward at first, worse than before. Like trying to politely navigate around one another in a tight hallway, neither was willing to be the first to push. It was easier when they had something to focus on, like the plan. If it weren’t for this job, Steve thinks whatever relationship they still had probably would have disintegrated by now. As it is, it gives them something to talk about. When they argue—and there’s still enough of that—they’ve been managing to keep it civil, for the most part.

Steve is never going to get over the heartbreak at this rate, but he’s trying to make his peace with it. He’d rather have Bucky in his life than not, so if this is the only way he can have him, he’ll take it.

Bucky’s still hiding something from him. Sometimes he’ll catch Bucky staring at him with this complicated look in his eye, full of doubt. Steve doesn’t have the energy anymore to guess what it might be. If Bucky wants to tell him, then he will. He’d be a hypocrite to push it.

Maybe in another month or two, they’ll work up to getting coffee or something.

He hasn’t had all that much time to dwell on it, anyway. They’ve been busy as all hell these past few weeks. Steve has been painting so much again that his neighbors have started to complain about the constant smell, but he has a sizable stack of completed canvases with more on the way. Everything is coming out better than he could have hoped; he’s only botched it and had to start over three or four times so far, which is better than his usual record. That’s not all for naught, even if he knows these paintings will never be put to use. He’ll have a home gallery of his own.

Beyond that, there’s a reason he isn’t so nervous to meet with Stark tonight. The four of them—Sam, Nat, Bucky, and Steve—had had more or less the same conversation half a dozen times this month, trying to recruit help. He’d been worried about letting even the barest version of their plan slip to people who might not join in, but Natasha had promised it wouldn’t be a problem. He didn’t ask what she meant by that; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

But they have most of a team now, and a half-baked plan. That felt good. Now they just need the resources to complete and execute that plan.

Steve glances at his wristwatch again before shoving his hands deep in his pockets. He ought to invest in a pair of gloves like Bucky’s. The weather is only getting worse as winter descends on New York. He’s thinking of looking around for a coffee shop or something—someplace warm to wait instead of out here where the air is rapidly chilling as the sun descends—when he spots two figures approaching.

“Hey, Sam,” Steve says once they’re within range.

Sam has his coat buttoned over what looks like the same suit he’s had for years. Steve can’t say much; he hadn’t bought a suit in ages till he’d gotten the job at the gallery, where it was required he have a decent rotation. A second man trails behind Sam, a little twitchy, like he’s confused about being here.

“Bruce,” Steve says, offering his hand in greeting.

Bruce Banner shakes Steve’s hand and smiles faintly behind his glasses.

“Told him I don’t know why he’s so jumpy,” Sam says, sending an elbow Banner’s way. “He’s worked with Stark before.”

“Yes, but that was in a—professional capacity,” Banner says. “And I hate boats.”

Sam hums acknowledgment. “Yeah, more of an air sign myself.”

“Have you seen anyone else?” Banner asks.

“Not yet,” Steve says. They wait a few more minutes, Sam and Steve chatting amicably about nothing while Banner stays quiet.

Sure enough, as the clock rolls toward seven, he spots a familiar head of flaming red hair floating up the street. Natasha wades through the pedestrian traffic flanked by two men, one of them decidedly more familiar to Steve than the other. Natasha’s and Bucky’s faces are both inscrutable, but Clint seems happy enough to trail along with them.

“Rogers,” Natasha says. “Ever heard of being inconspicuous?”

Steve glances around their little crowd. Oops. “Out of practice, I guess,” he says with a shrug.

“Jesus,” Bucky sighs.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says. Bucky’s always looked like a dream in a suit, and tonight’s no different. This one looks like he must have had it pressed after Steve had dug it out of boxes for him. Steve tries a smile.

Bucky doesn’t return it. His shoulders are tense. “Hey yourself.”

“What about me?” Clint says.

“No one forgot you, Barton,” Natasha says, sliding a thin silver phone from her clutch. She holds it up to her ear, then, eyebrows raising, draws it a couple inches away. “Yes, we’re here. Stop shouting; you’ll scare the birds.”

 _What birds?_ Steve thinks. Maybe he’s the bird. He feels as flighty as one when Natasha gestures for them all to follow her. Surely they don’t look conspicuous; just a well-dressed group of adults boarding a yacht for the evening. That had been the idea, anyway. He falls into step beside Bucky, both of them behind Natasha. Steve feels like he ought to be leading, only he’s not sure which boat is Stark’s. He’d thought he wasn’t nervous.

“You ready?” Bucky asks quietly.

Steve takes a deep breath, chancing a look at him. “Suppose so.”

“Better turn on the charm, Rogers.”

“That’s your department.”

Bucky smirks. “Yeah, well. You’re gonna try at least, right? Salesman’s attitude?”

“Am I gonna—yeah, I’m gonna try, Buck. That’s why we’re here.”

“Good.”

“Are you?”

“Don’t I always?”

“Yeah,” Steve huffs. “I trust you.”

Bucky nods slowly, then tucks his chin and keeps walking. The breeze drags at his hair, making it flutter and move as if it were conscious. Everyone else follows behind them. Their shoes clatter neatly against the pavement. Natasha’s heels clack louder than the rest, a staccato rhythm as she leads them to the end of the dock.

Steve had wondered, looking around the marina, which was Stark’s. He’d pegged Stark for the one with all the multi-colored string lights hung up along the deck, but he was wrong. Stark’s yacht draws attention to itself like a well-tailored suit: sleek, long, dark. Stark had struck him as the overstated type, but maybe he had Stark all wrong.

They board the yacht with help from a crew member that disappears as soon as they’re aboard without so much as a “Mr. Stark is that way.”

Natasha leads the group through a set of sliding glass doors into the cabin. Any chatter among them falls away at the sight of it.

Steve understands now—here’s the luxury. This is what money buys.

The cabin stretches out in either direction, done in rich mahogany and gleaming marble that reflects the warm lights overhead. The furniture, all creams and blues, looks comfortable even from a distance. A full-size kitchen unfolds to their left, a dining table with twelve place sets reveals dead ahead, while to their right is a wide half-circle sitting area with windows for walls.

It’s beautiful. Steve wonders what the hell they’re all doing here.

When he looks at Bucky, he looks just as mystified by it—and slightly irritated, too. He raises his eyebrows when he notices Steve looking.

“Holy shit,” Sam says, and lets out a low whistle. Clint coughs. Bruce looks like he might be ill, but Steve thinks that’s probably just the water.

A man appears at the top of a staircase Steve hadn’t noticed. “Took you long enough,” he says as he descends. It’s the tone more than anything that makes Steve recognize him from their few encounters. Tony Stark’s suit is as impeccable as his yacht, a slate grey with blue embroidered flowers leading across the tailored waist and onto one tapered pant leg. Steve would have expected nothing less.

“You know I’m never early, Tony,” Natasha says, shrugging out of her coat. She’s wearing a deep emerald dress that, playing off her hair, makes her look more Irish than Russian. A crew member materializes to take her coat, so the rest of them start shedding layers too. Steve passes his coat along with a nod and a smile, trying to settle himself.

Stark’s reached them by now. He holds out a hand for Steve to shake.

“Steve Rogers,” Stark says. “The man of the hour.”

Steve balks for half a second before Bucky elbows him. He reaches for Tony’s hand. “Actually, I believe that’s you.”

Stark’s eyes narrow, but he smiles. “Depends on how you play your cards.”

“It’s good to see you, Tony,” Bucky says, extending his right hand. He’s lost the glove on that one for the night, it seems, though he still has the left covered.

“Barnes.”

Steve introduces the rest of their ragtag team, though it turns out Stark already knows Clint as well as Bruce, so Sam’s the only odd one out.

“I hear you all have something of an investment opportunity for me,” Starks says once he’s all out of hands to shake.

Bucky grins, easy. “That we do.”

“You ready for our pitch?” Steve asks.

“No.” Stark shakes his head. “We’ll wait till we’re out on the water.”

“Oh, we’re actually going out?” Bruce asks.

“I’ve missed you, Banner,” Stark says, reaching for his arm. “Come have a drink with me. Everyone else, make yourselves at home. I’d invite you out to the deck, but it’s November, so—I’ll let you know when we’re far enough out.”

Stark drags Bruce off to the kitchen with him. Steve looks to Bucky, but he just shrugs and wanders off to a window. Something in his stride tells Steve to let him alone for now.

“Drinks?” Sam asks, his feet angled to follow Stark.

“Steve needs one,” Natasha says.

“I do not,” Steve says, scowling.

Sam and Natasha both level him unimpressed looks.

“Something with gin,” Steve concedes. “And stop fuckin tag teaming me like that.”

“He wishes we’d tag team him,” Sam says to Natasha with a wink, before he slides away toward the kitchen.

“I—what?” Steve splutters.

“Relax, Steve, or you’ll ruin us.” One corner of Natasha mouth curls up into a smile. “Go sit,” she says, pointing toward the sitting area at the end of the cabin. “I’ll bring your drink.”

Rubbing at the back of his neck, Steve hauls himself toward the half-circle. The plush couch, when Steve collapses onto it, is even more comfortable than it looks. He sags into it and unbuttons his suit jacket. Then he thinks to hell with it and loosens his tie, too. It’s obvious no amount of dressing up he does is going to impress Stark. Steve’s never owned a bespoke anything in his life.

The view out the windows is breathtaking, he’ll admit. The lights of lower Manhattan shimmer and shake as the yacht slowly trundles out of the marina and onto the river. That’s not a view Steve gets to see from this angle every day, everything reflected on the rippling water like that. He never cared much for the ocean as a kid, though he let Bucky drag him down to Coney Island a couple times every summer. Sights like this, though—where he’s not expected to actually get in the water—make him understand the appeal of sailing. This is nothing like the Staten Island Ferry.

Natasha glides over to him, drinks in hand. She passes Steve a martini glass as she folds onto the couch beside him. Steve takes a healthy swig—then cuts Natasha a suspicious look over the rim of glass.

“Is there any vermouth in this at all?” he asks.

Natasha’s painted lips twist. “You said gin.”

She takes a sip from her own low ball glass. From the looks of it, she’s drinking straight vodka with a twist of lemon. Steve ought to have known better than to trust Natasha to fix him a drink. She’s got the tolerance of a bull elephant.

“I’m not very good at pep talks,” she says.

“I don’t want one,” Steve says.

“I wasn’t offering.”

Steve frowns sideways at her.

Natasha kicks one delicate heel off and props her foot on the broad coffee table before them. The hem of her dress rides up toward her knees, and she reclines against the couch like a cat settling in for an afternoon nap. Steve wonders how many times she’s been here—though Natasha never did have a problem feeling at ease in strange places. That’s what made her such a great thief.

“You look like you need one, though,” she says.

“Ugh,” Steve groans, dragging a hand over his face. “Sorry. Stark isn’t looking, is he?”

“No,” Natasha says with a laugh. “He’s trying to get Banner to do shots with him, so I’d say he’s too busy to pay attention to your anxiety right now.”

Steve rolls his eyes and takes another sip of his drink. The alcohol’s bracing, if nothing else.

“Where are you, Steve?” Natasha asks.

“What?”

“You’re not all here.”

“Oh, trust me,” Steve mutters, “I’m here.”

“What?” Natasha quirks an eyebrow, glancing around the room. “Does all this bother you?”

“No,” Steve lies.

“Barnes is right. You actually like being miserable, don’t you?”

“What?” Steve splutters. His eyes search the room for Bucky. He’s still staring out the window, only now he has a drink in hand and Sam by his side. “Did Bucky tell you that?”

Natasha’s eyes narrow. “He doesn’t talk about you.”

“But you said—”

“He said something to that effect a long time ago. Seems it holds up.”

Steve chooses not to analyze the comment itself, instead going for the source. “What do you mean, he doesn’t talk about me?”

“I mean that he used to complain about you all the time, and now he clams up if I so much as mention you. And, before you ask—no, I don’t know what it means.”

“He—complained about me.”

“Oh, come on, Steve. He complains about you to your face. Love’s a bitter herb and all that, you know how he is with you. Or how he used to be, apparently.”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“So it’s mutual, then.”

“Natasha.”

Her hears her sigh, then the clink of ice against glass. He cracks his eyes open to find her watching him contemplatively from behind her drink. Somehow he’d forgotten how discerning she can be. It was a great quality, endlessly helpful—until she directed it at you. Her face softens the longer she looks at him, and she prods him in the calf with her shoe.

“Back to the matter at hand. You need to forget any problems you have with Stark in the next” —she glances at a clock across the room— “half an hour. Can you do that?”

“Just feels like we’re barking up the exact tree we’re trying to knock down,” Steve says.

“True, but someone has to pay for the wood chipper.”

Steve angles toward her on the couch. “Why would he even agree to his?”

Natasha’s smile is mercurial but warm. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Steve sinks back into the cushions, frowning out the window. He’d never understood Natasha’s softness for Stark, but then again, he didn’t understand a lot of things about her. She’d told him once that Stark contracted her out now and again—not all of his research was strictly legal, and occasionally required resources it wouldn’t be prudent for him to attain himself. They’d struck up a strange friendship through that. Steve’s only met Stark a handful of times, only with Nat around, but he’d guessed that the two of them had bonded over a mutual love for unpredictability.

“Steve,” Natasha says, “the worst he can do is tell us no.”

“He can’t say no, Nat. We need—I have to—”

He knows Natasha sees him look at Bucky across the room before he schools himself into staring at the coffee table. She hums softly.

“Then make sure he doesn’t,” she says, reaching forward to pat his cheek. Then she slips her shoe back on and gracefully peels herself from the couch. She’s gone before Steve thinks to ask her how he’s supposed to do that.

He looks around the cabin again, trying not to look at Bucky but knowing that’s where his eyes are going to end up anyway. Stark and Banner are still in the kitchen, Stark perched on the counter and flapping his hands while he talks. He watches as Natasha joins them, refilling her drink and then lingering against the island. Banner looks more relaxed at least.

When Steve lets his eyes find them, Sam is still with Bucky, but they’ve migrated to the long dining table. Bucky looks more at ease now, too. Sam was always good at that—tension mediation. Much better than Steve ever was.

It’s stupid of him to feel jealous. Maybe it’s just the boat rocking making his stomach turn uncomfortably.

Bucky meets Steve’s gaze across the room. Their eyes lock, steady, neither one looking away. The lights of the city are a halo around Bucky’s figure through the windows behind him. He has seemed more sure of himself since he agreed to all this. Not confident necessarily, not in the way Steve knows he can be, but like he has his feet back under him after a long time of scrabbling for purchase. He always preferred to have a clear sense of direction.

He smiles at Steve, small like a secret, and waves him over.

Steve doesn’t need to be asked twice. He’s by Bucky’s side in moments, taking the empty seat next to him.

“Natasha special?” Bucky asks.

Steve chuckles, raising his glass. “Yeah.”

Bucky clinks his own glass against Steve’s, though neither of them bother making a toast. Smiling at him, Steve feels his nerves begin to settle. A sense of direction—he can do this.

“Thank you,” Steve says.

Bucky’s brow pinches. “For what?”  

“Just—thank you, okay?”

Bucky gives him a strange look, but Sam cuts in before the mood can sour. “You come over here to get your ass whooped at Texas hold ‘em, Steve?”

“The only ass getting whooped,” Bucky says, “is yours, Wilson.”

“We’ll see about that,” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Steve huffs. “Sure, I’ll play.”

They play for pocket change. Sam leads them through easy chatter, gets them all laughing, and the hour burns away like nothing. After Steve folds for the third time in a row, he looks out the window and realizes the lights of the city are shimmering in the distance now. They must be out of the harbor, on the Atlantic now. The hum of the ship’s engine has quieted, soft jazz music taking its place.

Bucky wins the hand again, sweeping the pile of change toward himself. When Steve doesn’t react to his jibes, he glances around too, then falls silent.

“We stopped?” Sam says.

“Looks like it,” Steve says. He stands from the table, the chair legs squeaking against the tile, and smooths out his suit.

“Oh, don’t get up,” Stark says from where he’s reappeared through a doorway. Natasha, Bruce, and Clint wander in behind him from wherever the four of them had gotten off to. “Actually, wait, no, do get up.”

Sam snorts and stands, Bucky following after.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Stark says. “I assume you’re hungry. Do you like salmon? Of course you do. Everyone likes salmon.”

Before Steve has a chance to respond, a couple of crew members roll a serving cart in and start setting the table. They all look on awkwardly, except for Stark, who circles the table like an impatient shark. Once the meal is set, the crew members disappear again and Stark takes a seat at the head of the table. He looks around at all of them expectantly.

“Well?” he says. “Sit down. Step into my office.”

Steve takes the chair at the opposite head, Bucky and Sam on either side of him. Natasha puts herself closer to Stark, and Bruce and Clint scatter in the middle. There’s not enough of them to fill the whole table. The food smells good, though—salad, salmon, asparagus. Nothing Steve can’t put a name to, which makes him feel better about the whole thing. This feels less like a business meeting and more like a dinner party the longer they’re on this boat.

“So,” Stark says cheerfully, “I hear you’ve lost your mind.”

Steve pauses with his fork in midair. “Excuse me?”

“What you’re planning, it’s impossible.” Stark takes a bite of food, then waves his fork at Steve while he chews. “Pierce’s security systems are state of the art—no one touches him. No one’s even tried.”

“Exactly,” Steve says.

“And you think you’re—what? Different? Invulnerable?”

“We know just how vulnerable we are,” Steve says, and his eyes flick briefly to Bucky. “Which is why this is as safe a bet as you can make.”

“You know what’s truly a safe bet?” Stark leans an elbow on the table. “Bonds. Fixed annuities. Real estate, if the market’s right.”

Steve lays his utensils down. He can see Natasha shifting in her seat. “Why would you bring us all the way out here just to turn us down?”

“Who says I’m turning you down?” Stark says.

“You just said you think we’re stupid,” Bucky says. He hasn’t touched his food yet.

“Did I use the word stupid? Banner, did I say ‘stupid’?”

“Uh,” Bruce says, “not specifically, no.”

“See!” Stark brandishes his fork. “No, I said you’ve lost your minds, which implies that I believe you to have minds capable of being lost in the first place. Therefore, not stupid.”

“So just crazy, then,” Steve huffs. He’s starting to remember precisely why he dislikes Stark so much.

“Obviously.”

“Well, great.”

“I didn’t say crazy was a bad thing, though, if you’d be so kind as to pay attention to the words I’m actually speaking. I do choose them carefully.”

Natasha laughs unkindly.

“Okay, well, most of the time,” Stark concedes.

“You—” Steve starts. “I’m not following.”

Stark rolls his eyes. “I’m an inventor, Rogers, or did you forget? If I hadn’t learned a long time ago that crazy ideas are the beginnings of innovation, we wouldn’t be on this yacht.”

“We’re not exactly talking innovation,” Sam says, slicing his fish.

“Semantics,” Stark says.

“So you’re—what are you saying?” Bucky asks. “You’ll support us?”

Stark shrugs. “Sure.”

Steve’s eyes pinch shut, and he shakes his head slowly back and forth. “I’m sorry—what?”

“I said I’ll support you and your ridiculous venture, Rogers,” Stark garbles, his mouth full. “Do you need hearing aids? Are you secretly ancient?”

Steve drops his hand to the table, his palm smacking so hard the dishes rattle. Everyone pauses, even Clint, who’s been quietly demolishing his meal without a care. They all look at Steve, whose brow creases with confusion. He stares Stark down across the table; Stark watches him back, the easy expression slowly fading off his face.

“We came here with a team, and a plan, and a pitch,” Steve says slowly. “But it’s that easy?”

“I like to see you’re capable of making an effort,” Stark says. “And we all know you’ve only got about 20 percent of a plan.”

“You’ll just give us the money, just like that?”

“How do I explain? It’s like this, Rogers. I have a lot of money. I don’t know what to do with most of it. My wife, Pepper, she’s good at handling these things—we donate to a lot of charities, we’ve got that whole foundation set up. Of course, we have our indulgences.” Stark waves a vague hand at the room. “And I like to gamble now and then. Human nature—I’m sure you understand. Now, I’m sure this particular gamble is a massive undertaking for you. For me, though, it’s like betting five dollars on a horse at the race tracks. If you lose, you lose, and I’m only out five bucks. But if you win? Well, that might be nice for me.”

Steve shakes his head, still unconvinced. “But if you’re implicated in this—”

“I’m trusting you to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Stark says with a glance at Natasha, another at Bucky.

“You said yourself it’s impossible.”

“What can I say? I love an underdog.”

Bucky kicks Steve’s foot under the table. “Stop trying to talk him out of it, asshole,” he whispers, fierce.

“Listen to your partner, Rogers. He’s the brains, I can tell.”

Steve sighs and sits back in his chair. He can feel everyone’s eyes burning into him, but he can’t pinpoint why he seems to be trying to sabotage them either.

“Pierce is an asshole,” Stark says. “I know you think I am, but he’s on a different level. Does that make you feel better, Steve?”

Bucky’s jaw works. Steve sits up straighter and reaches for his fork again. “Maybe it does.”

“The question is—why do _you_ want to do this? Why Pierce?”

“I’m—” Steve holds his fork uncomfortably tight. Bucky won’t meet his eye, but everyone else—Sam, Natasha, Stark—is waiting intently for his answer. “It’s just for the money.”

Stark nods, satisfied even if Steve wasn’t very convincing. Sam and Nat both turn back to their food, and Bucky’s still staring determinedly at his plate.

“Well,” Stark says, “you have your funding. Time to get planning.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can reblog this chapter's artwork on tumblr [here](http://gassadaarts.tumblr.com/post/178984169108/guess-who-makes-the-worst-decisions-painted-by)!


	8. Chapter 8

“So,” Steve says, “here’s what we have so far.”

They’re in the empty office space Stark footed the bill for, above an even emptier warehouse off a side street in Red Hook. It’s remote enough—and easy to burn down, if it comes to that, which had been why Clint picked it. He says he’s in real estate; Steve isn’t sure he believes that, but he goes with it anyway. Everyone here has a resume that wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, and they couldn’t exactly meet at the art gallery. The narrow windows, dingy carpet worn thin, flickering fluorescents overhead—this would have been a shitty office to work in. As it is, it works well enough for their purposes.

The whole gaggle is here. Bruce and Sam sit at one of many leftover desks, Clint’s in a precarious rolly chair, and Natasha leans against a table with her arms crossed. Bucky stands facing them all with Steve, his face smooth. Spread out on the wall behind them is detailed schematics of the Wyvern. Bruce had very carefully excavated them from the casino’s systems. Anyone with a brain and a pencil could sketch a map of the place, but they’d needed more information than that. Now they have security camera placement, which doors require passcodes, the bowels of the place laid plain like an anatomy textbook.

No blueprint of the vault, but that’s just fine. They’ve got all they need.

Steve passes a broad hand over the schematics. “Sam is going in next week to get on the ground. There was an opening for a bartender, and we figured having someone there to get a real feel for the place and its daily operations could only help us. Sam, you’re ready?”

“As ever,” Sam says.

“Great. Let us know if you need anything. Bruce, Clint—any updates on what you’ve learned about the security system?”

“Uh, it makes Azkaban look like airport jail,” Clint says, scooting his chair to where Bruce is hunched before a heavy-duty laptop.

Bruce pushes his glasses up and smiles. “He’s exaggerating.”

“By how much?” Bucky asks.

Bruce holds up thumb and index finger, an inch apart.

Bucky’s breath hisses on the way out. “Let me take a look.” He crowds around the desk with Bruce and Clint, all of them muttering in low voices about magnetic doors and genetics-linked lock codes.

The meeting loses any of its formality and starts to break apart then, so Steve concedes and turns back to his schematics. He ought to head home if he isn’t needed anymore, where he can attend to something productive.

“Do we have a timeline yet?” Natasha asks.

Steve starts, glancing at her where she’s now standing beside him. “Bucky’s leaning toward the start of the new year, if we can get our act together by then—and he thinks we can. Apparently Pierce is usually out of the country for a few weeks around then.”

“You want me to check that out too? To confirm?”

“Please.”

“Will do.” She smiles at him, curious. “You seem more settled.”

“I’m settling,” Steve says. “A step at time, you know.”

Her expression turns knowing, and almost warm. “I’ll head out, unless you need me for anything else.”

Steve shakes his head. “You’ll be here Thursday night?”

“That’s our next group therapy session?” Steve rolls his eyes; she laughs at her own joke. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Rogers.”

Nat waves goodbyes to everyone before she takes her leave. Bruce, Clint, and Bucky seem to have settled in for a long haul, but Sam is already gathering his things.

“Really,” Steve says as he approaches him, “are you good, Sam?”

Sam’s brow furrows, but he’s smiling. “You doubting me?”

Steve holds up his hands. “Not a bit. Just checking in.”

“I’m good, Steve. Making drinks for a bunch of rich assholes doesn’t sound too hard.”

“You’re supposed to be—”

“Picking up intel, yeah, I know. Don’t micromanage me.”

Steve huffs a laugh and claps him on the shoulder. “Be careful—I know, but I have to say it,” Steve adds at Sam’s eyeroll. “Give me a call if you learn anything worth learning.”

“Always do.”

Steve is pulling on his coat when Bucky calls out to him. “Hey, Rogers, hang on a second.”

Leaving his buttons unfastened, Steve waits for Bucky by the door. “What’s up?” Steve says.

“I want to scope the place out for myself. I’d like you to come.”

Steve blinks hard. “I thought you didn’t want either of us going near there.”

A few weeks ago, Steve had had half a mind to march into Pierce’s office at the Wyvern and settle this in a more direct way. Bucky had sworn to never speak to him again if Steve so much as brought it up twice. It wasn’t safe for either of them to show their faces at the casino, Bucky had said. Steve had cowed to his ferocity.

“Yeah, well, situation demands it,” Bucky says. His voice is even, betraying nothing. “We need a lay of the land, better than what these schematics can tell us.”

“That’s why we’re sending in Sam.”

“No, Sam’s there to learn the staff and the rotation.”

“So you want to—what, get a feel for the ambiance?”

Bucky just stares at him, unimpressed. “Just go with me.”

“Why me? Why not Natasha?”

“Nat’s busy.”

Steve shuts his eyes for a moment. A weekend away with Bucky—he’d have taken it in a heartbeat only weeks ago. Now he’s not sure that it isn’t too much for him to deal with, on top of everything else. He almost says no.

“Come on, Steve,” Bucky says gently. “I know we’ve been… But we’re working together, and I need you to work with me. Please.”

Steve lets out a slow breath. Maybe this is an act of reconciliation. This is the first time Bucky has directly asked for Steve’s help, instead of just passively allowing his contributions. That’s something. Bucky wanting to spend time with him, in whatever capacity—it’s not quite a peace offering, not yet, but it’s something. He’s trying.

“Yeah,” he says, “of course, Buck.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says. “I’ll figure out a cover, let you know when we’re ready.”

He goes back to the computers, and Steve goes home.

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

 

Steve’s suitcase is wedged into the bottom of what’s supposed to be the linen closet, but really holds miscellany he couldn’t fit anywhere else. Hauling the suitcase free jostles the shelf above it laden with old cookbooks and one faded quilt. Nothing topples, though, and Steve shuts the door before anything has a chance to come crashing down on his skull. He carries the suitcase—and it’s more of a glorified bag with wheels, really—to his room and dumps it on the bed. He ought to have done this before work, or last night, but he’s always been a last minute packer. Bucky’s probably had his things together since before he mentioned the idea to Steve. Someone could guess from these habits alone which is the artist and which is the engineer.

Steve tosses what he needs into the suitcase without much care for neatness, figuring the hotel room will have an iron. Bucky just booked the one, which had surprised Steve when he’d sent him the reservation information. He hadn’t argued, or even asked, too afraid the answer would be something as innocuous as “cost effective.” That’s probably all it is. The Wyvern Resort, adjacent to the casino, isn’t exactly cheap. Stark had essentially written them a blank check, but Bucky only likes to spend what he has to. Steve understands.

Bucky had insisted they travel separately, despite the shared room. Safety precaution or distancing measure, Steve isn’t sure, but Bucky should be on his way there now. Steve’s set to arrive later this evening, and in fact should probably be hurrying to catch his train. He shoves socks and underwear into the side cavities, then dashes to the bathroom for everything else he might need. He’s out the door in another ten minutes, headed for the 4 Line that will take him to Grand Central.

It’s a dull journey north of the city into Westchester County toward the Connecticut border. The blocky sprawl of the Bronx gives way to pristine suburbs, all passing by in a wash of late autumn drabness outside the train window. The sky is thick and clouded today, gray with a winter storm’s apprehension. Steve hopes it won’t snow, though they’re due for a good one by now. Blizzards always put him on edge.

To take his mind off it, he pulls out the notes Natasha had given him. Everything on paper—old school, maybe; definitely paranoid. But they’ve an imperative to be careful, and they all saw how it only took Bruce the better part of an afternoon to crack open Pierce’s security system like a Fabergé egg. Better safe than hacked, or something.

According to what Nat had gleaned for him, Pierce might share some of their paranoia. Steve’s not sure yet what, if anything, he’ll do with that information—but he’d brought it along anyway. He can’t seem to let go of his little pipe dream.

After the train arrives, it’s a short cab ride over to the casino. Steve had wondered at first why Pierce would set the second jewel of his gambling empire into the lackluster crown of the suburbs, but it makes sense to him now. Close enough to the city to draw in crowds; far enough out to keep it from drowning in the hubbub. Westchester County isn’t exactly isolated, but it’s easier to stay in one place here without the pressure of the next exciting thing looming around the block.

The Wyvern Resort & Casino holds enough excitement of its own. It yawns up tall and wide at the water’s edge, a massive structure of concrete and red brick. There’s nothing distinctive about it architecturally, but Steve supposes that’s the point; you’re not supposed to linger outside. It’s almost gaudy, with its sign lit bright even during the day. A dragon-like creature in neon green curls around the white words, ensnaring them. Steve passes under the dragon on his way inside, suitcase rolling behind him.

The lobby’s decor is modern and uncluttered, directing you one of two ways: reception to the left and on the right, the broad mouth of the casino. Steve’s surprised it’s just an archway of rich green marble instead of an actual dragon’s jaw, but maybe that’s too on the nose. He turns his back on it, headed for reception to pick up his room key where Bucky had left it for him.

“Is it Mr. Rogers?” the woman at the desk asks.

Steve blinks, surprised they’re staying here under real names. “Um, yes.”

“Great, here you are.” Steve pockets the key she hands him. “Would you like help with your bags?”

“No, thank you.”

“Of course.” She smiles so wide it must hurt her cheeks, then gestures behind him. “The elevators to your room are on the far side of the casino. I can have someone guide you, if you’d like.”

“I’ll manage,” Steve says, taking his suitcase in hand once more. “Thanks again.”

“Anything you need, Mr. Rogers.”

Steve spins on his heel and heads for the inevitable. It’s all an unnecessary ploy; who would stay here if they weren’t planning on gambling? The website details summer recreation on the water, an adjacent golf course, but really it’s all to the same end—getting you in here.

The noise hits him like an ocean swell. The whirring _ding ding ding_ of slot machines, the clatter of chips, roulette balls spinning on the wheels. Talk and laughter bubbles up over all of it, drowning out the bland muzak drifting out of speakers in the ceiling. Everything is gleaming gold, from the chairs to the reflective detail on the ceiling, doubling everything back at you from above. Steve takes his time meandering toward the elevators. Much as he wants to hurry, they’re supposed to be mapping this place out. That, and he’s looking for Sam. He’s mostly interested in what he doesn’t see: no windows or clocks, no visible security cameras or guards. Steve knows those last two are around, but he supposes it doesn’t do to make people know they’re being watched; that might ruin the fun.

The elevator requires his key, so Steve swipes it and enters. His floor is already input—higher than he’d remembered it should be. Hadn’t the reservations said they were on the third floor? Why is this taking him to the eighth? The building’s only ten stories. Steve pulls his key card out again, frowning down at it, where a little green dragon twines itself around the number 807. The elevator dings, doors opening. Steve shrugs and steps off anyway, figuring if a mistake’s been made, he may as well take advantage and look around first.

He swipes his card at the door of 807. The lock clunks and opens, so Steve slowly pushes the door ajar. The hinges whine softly.

“Steve?” Bucky calls from somewhere inside. “That you?”

“Housekeeping,” Steve says, and hears Bucky snort. He appears at the end of the hall, his arms crossed as he stares at Steve, still stuck at the threshold.

“You coming in or not?” Bucky asks.

Steve lets the door fall closed behind him. The wheels of his suitcase clack on the tile in the entryway—and it is an entryway, because as he reaches Bucky, he realizes they have a suite. The living room at the end of the hall is done in pale neutrals, rich greens, and soft blues. Broad windows with the curtains pushed back let in plenty of light. It’s a balm to Steve’s eyes after a the garishness of the casino downstairs, but that’s probably the point. There’s a small kitchen and dining area to the side, and a pair of French doors opens into what must be the bedroom. It’s still decidedly a hotel room—cheap light bulbs, nothing particularly remarkable—but a nicer one. But they were supposed to be booked for a two-bed standard room five flights below.

“Thought you said we were on the third floor,” Steve says.

“I did. About that.”

Steve eyes him warily. “What?”

Bucky’s mouth hardly moves as he says, “Pierce knows we’re here.”

“He—what? _How?”_

“Who the hell knows?” Bucky throws his hands into the air and paces farther into the room. He’s left his shoes on, and his footfalls are heavy. “I booked us over the phone from a blocked number and said I’d pay in cash. Unless he’s the one who took the call—in which case his voice has gotten a lot higher—then I have no clue how he knows. He upgraded our room for no extra charge, according to Ms. Smiles down at reception.”

“Bucky, should we leave?” Steve drops his bag and closes the distance between them. “Say the word and we’ll go.”

“No,” Bucky sighs, his hand rubbing at his brow. “We’re already here.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Come on, get your stuff, let’s go.”

“Steve, if we leave, that’ll look suspicious. Right now he has no reason to suspect anything strange, but if we make a run for it right after getting here, he’ll figure out something’s up. That’s about as obvious a red flag as you can get.”

Steve closes his eyes, thinking. Bucky’s right, as per, but he’s not willing to admit to it yet.

“Besides,” Bucky says, “we’re having cocktails with him in an hour, so.”

“What?!” Steve shouts, but Bucky is headed for the couch, apparently resigned to it. He flops down and closes his eyes. “Bucky.”

Bucky sighs, scrubbing a hand at his forehead. “Just leave off it for once, okay? Go take a shower. Get dressed. Can you do that for me?”

Steve wants to protest. His palms itch with how badly he wants to. If this were two years ago—a month ago—he’d already be picking a proper fight, already have Bucky on his feet again to throw arguments back at him. They could make excuses; it wouldn’t even be hard. _Sorry, Mr. Pierce, but Steve’s fallen ill and I need to stay back with him._ Even if Pierce insisted on evidence, Steve’s lost what little color he has, so he’s sure he could pass for feverish if need be. Or something along the sames lines, more drastic—a relative in the hospital. They have options. Steve can’t fathom why Bucky’s not taking them.

But he’s not supposed to be picking fights anymore. He’s trying to make amends. He’s supposed to be earning Bucky’s trust back by trusting him to handle himself. It’s gut instinct after twenty years to want to grab Bucky by the back of the shirt collar and drag him the hell out of here, the same way Bucky had done for him so many times when he’d stepped in deeper than he ought to have.

Hadn’t he resented Bucky for that, though? Hadn’t Bucky learned to let Steve get a few swings in here or there, so long as there wasn’t risk of Steve bleeding out in the streets? Steve had felt like he hadn’t had a choice. If someone said something ignorant, he said something back. That was his choice to make. Bucky had tried to talk him out of it, sure, but he’d let him make it when it came down to it.

Steve owed him that much. He could give Bucky that much.

Quietly, he takes his things into the bedroom. There’s just the one bed, which they’ll have to negotiate later, but his priority is the bathroom right now. The shower is oversized and overcomplicated, and Steve wastes a ridiculous few minutes trying to solve its dials like a cryptex. He spends his time under the spray working through his nerves as much as working shampoo through his hair. He scrubs his skin pink. The water’s too hot.

The mirror is clouded with fog when he steps out of the shower. He leaves it that way as he towels off, but as he’s brushing his teeth, his hand darts out to wipe a clear streak. His toothbrush sticks out of his mouth at a strange angle in the reflection. His hair is in disarray, the water darkening it to brown. Whatever had compelled him to look himself in the eye dissipates the moment he spies the toothpaste at the corners of his mouth. He spits in the sink, then stalks back into the bedroom. The bare soles of his feet slap softly against the tile.

There’s a rap against the glass of the French doors, still hanging ajar. Bucky’s half-obscured by the thin curtains and the door itself.

“You decent in there?” Bucky asks.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Steve says, hiking the towel more securely around his waist.

Bucky laughs humorlessly. “Thought it’d be polite to ask, even so.”

“Come on in.”

Steve busies himself with his suitcase, his fingers clutched in the lapels of the only blazer he’d brought. He doesn’t look up when Bucky glides past him, and only lets out his breath once the bathroom door is shut. They’re being stupid. Steve feels like a self-conscious teenager all over again. He probably still remembers how to change clothes without getting all the way undressed, like he’d done in Bucky’s room so many times before he realized he could just change in the bathroom instead.

The pipes groan softly as Bucky cuts the shower on. Shit. Steve had left all his things on the counter. He could get dressed, but he’s not properly dry yet, and he hates putting on deodorant with his clothes already on. He flops backward onto the bed, the towel coming loose, but what does it matter? There’s a closed door between them. Nothing indecent so long as there’s a door shut.

He waits, and the water cuts off, and he keeps waiting. Eventually he gets up to dig around for a hotel robe, the material soft and plush against his skin. Even then Bucky still hasn’t emerged from the bathroom. Steve can him knocking around in there, shaving or something. He ought to let him alone, but he needs his goddamn deodorant.

He taps on the door. “Hey, Buck?”

“What?”

“My bag.”

“Oh.” There must have been another robe in the bathroom, because when the door opens, Steve laughs—they match. Bucky grimaces, misinterpreting. “Sorry. My hair’s no good.”

Steve squints at him, but it looks fine to him. A bit awkward, with its in-between length, but hardly “no good.” Then again, Steve’s always been biased. Bucky would probably look good bald with blue eyebrows to him. Rather than reveal himself, though, he just shrugs and says, “Who cares?”

Bucky shoves Steve’s bag at him, then shuts the door in his face.

Steve gets himself dressed, then goes to wait in the living room. He flicks on the television to distract himself, but the news is hyperbolic and everything scripted starts to get on his nerves after about two seconds. He cuts it off and tips his head back instead, willing Bucky to be ready soon. He’d forgotten how fussy and slow he could be. But, Steve supposes, that’s why he always looked about twelve times better than anyone else in a room.

A frustrated sigh practically rattles the French doors. Steve blinks his eyes open, sitting up. “Bucky?”

“I’m fine.”

Steve knows his voice too well to believe that. He crosses the room and pushes the doors more ajar. Bucky’s mostly dressed—pants, shirt, belt, a sport jacket laid over the bed. He’s scowling down at the two ends of his tie, his hands hanging limp beside him.

“Buck?” Steve asks softly.

“It’s the fucking—” Bucky holds up his left hand like it’s done something morally reprehensible. “I can do buttons, and shoelaces, and every other goddamn thing, but ties. It doesn’t make any sense.”

He tears the tie from around his neck and dumps it on the ground, reaching for the sport jacket before the tie hits the carpet. “Hey,” Steve says, bending down to take it. He doesn’t recognize this one, the ocean color that’s sure to bring out the green in Bucky’s eyes; it must be new. Bucky already has his jacket on and is sidestepping Steve for the door, but Steve stands and grabs him gently by the elbow. “Bucky, come on.”

“What?” Bucky asks, whirling on him, but the fight drains out almost instantly. He just looks tired.

Steve holds up the tie. “Let me help?”

“I can do without it.”

“Sure, but do you wanna wear it? I can tie it. It’s no trouble.”

“Yeah, I know it’s no trouble,” Bucky grinds out, but he deflates again and shrugs off his jacket. Steve steps forward, the tie draped over his forearm. He fingers find Bucky’s shirt collar and pop it up, careful not to brush against Bucky’s neck. His pulse is jumping in his throat. Steve keeps his eyes on his hands as he loops the fabric around Bucky’s neck and starts to tie it. Bucky’s watching his face, though. He can feel it.

“It still hurts you?” Steve asks softly.

“Yeah.” Bucky’s breath ghosts over his cheeks. “There’s nerve damage, so. It’s probably always going to hurt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“I’m sorry you’re in pain, Buck.”

“Tonight—it’s going to be fine,” Bucky says as Steve fiddles with the knot, making sure it sits right in the hollow of Bucky’s throat. “Just follow my lead, and we’ll be fine.”

“Do you—I guess you meet with him, sometimes,” Steve guesses. He hadn’t considered it before, but it must be true—if Bucky’s working for Pierce, he must see him.

“I do,” Bucky says. “I should have told you about that, I guess.”

Steve smiles, small, and smooths Bucky’s collar back down. They’re still standing too close. “That’s okay. You had reasons not to.” Namely, Steve’s own penchant for overreacting.

“Still,” Bucky says, “I’m trying to be more honest with you. I don’t mean to keep secrets.”

Steve takes a deep breath and meets his eyes. He lets himself look for seconds that seem much too short. Then he takes two steps back, putting a comfortable amount of space between them again. Steve doesn’t want to push anything between them, not now—not when there’s so much else to be dealing with; not when they have to share this room tonight. Bucky’s brow twitches, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“You ready?” Steve breathes.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, voice gruff. “Let’s go.”


	9. Chapter 9

Alexander Pierce is an exacting man. It’s hard to believe that the bartenders at his own casino haven’t learned by now how he takes his drinks—surely it’s engraved in gold somewhere, Steve thinks, the first thing any of them learn. Even so, when the server comes to their table, Pierce instructs him with the precision of a commanding officer. Half a teaspoon of finely ground sugar, he says, and three dashes—a dash, three dashes, do you hear me—of bitters and a teaspoon of water. Stir till every granule of the sugar dissolves. Large ice cubes, precisely five, and two ounces of top shelf bourbon; swirl gently. Garnish with an orange peel no longer than three inches.

It’s an old fashioned. That’s all it is. Steve wants to roll his eyes, but the server doesn’t bat an eyelash.

Pierce had been late, but Bucky had assured Steve he always arrived ten minutes after he said he would. The power move is empty when it becomes that predictable, but maybe there’s still something to it; they had arrived on time anyway. The hostess had led them to a private table in the back of the hotel restaurant, set off by a translucent partition. Steve and Bucky took their seats. The dim light overheard and the rich red of the place made Steve feel like they’d tumbled past the mouth and down the dragon’s gullet, but Bucky’s shoulders were loose. He tapped Steve’s foot under the table and smiled at him.

“Thought you said cocktails,” Steve said.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “He’s worse than Stark about flexing. He’ll give us twenty minutes and not a second more, I promise.”

Pierce arrived ten minutes later with all the swagger of a man who owns the place. Steve had expected to be physically intimidated by him, but though Pierce’s grip is strong, Steve towers over him when he stands to shake his hand. Pierce is broad-shouldered like he was strong once, but now that he’s pushing sixty and resting comfortably, he’s lost his edge. He still carries himself like a tall man, though, and his eyes are clear and sharp as he takes in first Steve, then Bucky.

They order their drinks. Steve opts for a proper martini this time; Bucky takes a glass of merlot, as always.

“No liquor for you, James?” Pierce asks.

Bucky shakes his head, smiling faintly. “I’d like to have my wits about me when we hit the tables.”

“Of course.” Pierce’s own smile is slimy, Steve thinks, but perhaps he’s projecting. Pierce turns it on him suddenly. “So, this is—?”

“Steve Rogers, Mr. Pierce,” Bucky says.

“Yes, he gave me his name,” Pierce says, still addressing Bucky though he’s staring right through Steve.

“Oh.” Bucky huffs a laugh. “We’re partners.”

Steve’s eyes flick to Bucky’s, widening, unsure of his meaning. It’s a word with multiple definitions. Then Bucky’s hand finds Steve’s on the pristine white tablecloth, and that answers that. Steve gapes at him for a beat before he remembers he’s supposed to play along. It’s probably the easiest cover. He hams it up more than he needs to, lets his eyes go soft as he flips his hand to intertwine their fingers. Bucky’s skin is warm and smooth. Bucky smiles at him, indulging, and it’d ache if Steve didn’t know Bucky would never really bat his eyelashes like that so publicly. Just a cover, he reminds himself.

“Your partner,” Pierce repeats thoughtfully. “How sweet. Have you known each other long?”

Steve chuckles, ducking his head. “Our whole lives. Bucky, he—uh—”

The real story of how they met is that Bucky caught Steve shoplifting a box of cake mix from the bodega around the corner from school when they were seven. He’d shoved his pocket money into Steve’s hands and made him go back to pay for it, then followed him home to help him bake the cake. It had been for Steve’s ma’s birthday. That year, on top of the bare devil’s food cake, Steve had given her a second son.

But Steve figures Pierce wouldn’t want to hear that story. Bucky saves his fumble: “We went to school together as kids.”

Pierce hums, nodding, though it’s obvious he doesn’t give much of a shit. Steve withdraws his hand to grab his drink instead, and Bucky leans back in his chair, his expression pleasantly patient. Steve had forgotten how well he can improvise in situations like this; maybe in another life, he was a stage actor, like he’d had fantasies of as a kid.

Sizing them up over the rim of his glass, Pierce takes a slow drink. He mouth quirks downward, like he’s not quite satisfied with it, and Steve wonders if he’d the kind of boss to go berate the staff himself. “So,” Pierce says, setting his glass aside, “what brings you both here to my fine establishment?”

It’s delivered innocently enough, but Steve hears the probe beneath it. He’s suddenly unsure whether he’s supposed to know that Bucky works for Pierce in this scene.

“Steve wanted to get out of the city, have a little fun,” Bucky says, and his smile turns a hint coy. He winks at Steve across the table. “Our anniversary’s in a few weeks—we’re celebrating early.”

“You should have told me you were coming,” Pierce says.

“Of course,” Bucky says, splaying his hand over the table. “My apologies, Mr. Pierce. It won’t happen again.”

“It’s no trouble, James. I just like to know when we have important guests coming in.”

Steve and Bucky exchange a brief, loaded glance. “Like I said,” Bucky says slowly, “I meant no offense. I hope you don’t take any.”

Pierce’s chair gives a quiet creak as a he leans forward, his predatory eyes trained on Bucky. “Of course not. Why should I?”

“We appreciate the room upgrade,” Steve interjects, desperate to get Pierce to stop looking at Bucky like that—like something to be had. “That was kind of you.”

Pierce turns his gaze on Steve with deliberate scrutiny. “Anything for James here. He’s been a real help to me, you know.”

Steve smiles vaguely, worried about putting his foot where it ought not be. “I’m glad,” he offers lamely.

“He’s got a real talent with cards,” Pierce says, talking directly to Steve now, as if Bucky wasn’t even in the room. “Almost a prodigy, wouldn’t you say? Has he always been quick like that?”

“Sure,” Steve says, eyebrows raised. “It was magic for a long time, as kids. Can’t tell you how many times I heard him ask, ‘Is this your card?’”

“And was it? Your card?”

Steve’s laugh is breathy, more of an exhale. “Most of the time, yeah, it was. I got kind of bored by it after a while, to tell you the truth.” His eyes dart to Bucky’s. “Sorry, Buck.”

“That’s when I started stepping up my game,” Bucky says. “Had to keep impressing you.”

Pierce’s even expression doesn’t waver. “What about you, Steve? Are you as talented as your partner?”

“Oh, I’m more of a—” Something jams hard into Steve’s toes. He yelps before realizing it’s Bucky’s heel grinding into his foot. He tries to turn the sound into a yawn, but it’s a paltry cover-up.

“Steve’s rotten at cards,” Bucky says flatly. “No poker face, unfortunately.”

Pierce cocks his head. “Then why come to a casino?”

Bucky flounders for an instant, his brow pulling down. One save only dug him another hole, but Steve clears his throat. “I just like watching Bucky, mostly. That’s fun enough for me.”

“How sweet,” Pierce repeats. He reaches for his glass and upends the last of it into his mouth. The skin of his throat as he swallows is papery and thin; Steve imagines he can see the bourbon and bitters trickling like rain down a window. “Well,” Pierce says, standing from the table, “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay. Are you here for long?”

“Just till tomorrow,” Bucky says.

“I have to be getting back, but you two should stay for dinner—my treat, for your anniversary.”

“Oh, that’s—” Steve starts, but Bucky presses on his toes again. “Nice. Thank you.”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Pierce.”

“Oh, James, one more thing—a reminder.” Pierce’s eyes narrow, and his next words sound carefully chosen. “I don’t like to conduct business here.”

“Of course not,” Bucky says, nodding.

“I’ll be in touch,” Pierce says. “A pleasure meeting you, Steve.”

Then he’s striding off around the partition, gone in an instant. As soon as he’s out of site, Bucky sags forward over the table, not with relief but with something heavier. He plants his elbows on the table to cradle his forehead, and his shoulders heave with labored breaths. He’s not crying, but Steve has heard him on the edge enough times to recognize when he’s holding something huge at bay. Bucky doesn’t upset like this easily. Steve reaches out a tentative hand, gaining confidence when Bucky makes a quiet sound at his touch. Steve strokes his back in gentle circles for a quiet minute. The tense line of Bucky’s back starts to go slack.

“Bucky,” he says. “What did he mean, he doesn’t conduct business here?”

“He was telling me not to fucking cheat, Steve.” Bucky sits up abruptly, a switch flipped, and nearly pins Steve’s hand to the chair back. He reaches for his wine glass and knocks the rest of it back in one gulp. “’Anywhere else, by all means, please use your _talent._ But don’t even think about it here when it’s my money you’re stealing.’ Christ.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Bucky, don’t—”

“I should’ve primed you for that better than I did. I’m sorry.”

Steve wants to pursue it, but the light in Bucky’s eyes is strange and far away. “Don’t worry about it,” he says instead, deciding that provoking him further would be unhelpful. “We’re intact?”

“For the most part.” Bucky drags both palms down his face, the skin reddening with the friction. Above the fingers splayed over his jaw, his eyes watch Steve, made brighter by the color of his tie. “Steve,” he says slowly.

“What?” Steve asks.

“I—” He pauses, shakes his head; he’s all over the place right now. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Bucky sighs, his eyelids sliding closed. He sits silently for a long time, the pinch in his brow the only indication of the torrent going on in his head. The cogs are turning so hard his ears are practically smoking. Steve waits, his own drink sweating and forgotten by now. It hadn’t been very good—too dirty.

“Steve,” Bucky repeats, his voice strained.

Steve sits up straighter. “I’m here, Buck.”

“If I ask you to stay away from Pierce, will you do it?”

“Will I—what do you mean, will I stay away?”

Bucky’s eyes flash open, and the blue burns hot as the center of a flame. “You can’t just promise me?”

“Buck, come on.” Steve’s face twists. “What’s wrong?”

“He wanted to _recruit_ you,” Bucky hisses. “When he asked if you had any talents, that’s what he was doing—like he thought I wouldn’t pick up on it. He figures he’s got me, maybe you’re just as good, or you’d be useful in some other way. Jesus. Sorry if I hurt your toes, but I thought he might be leading you toward admitting you’re an art forger, and then he’d have blackmailed you, and we would’ve been fucked.”

“My toes are fine,” Steve says faintly.

“Will you promise me?”

Bucky stares him down, hands flat against the tabletop, a ferocious look about him—almost possessive. Steve’s throat closes up in the face of it. The swirling noise of the restaurant falls away like he dove underwater; it’s just the two of them at this table. He swallows, his heart knocking heavily in his chest. He doesn’t like to make promises he can’t keep. He never has—he may be a crook but he’s not an oathbreaker. Steve means what he says, always.

So it’s the truth when he says, “Yes.” He means it when he continues, “I promise, Bucky. I’ll stay away from him.”

Bucky’s shoulders loosen, and he nods, satisfied. “Good. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

When Bucky takes Steve’s by the wrist and hauls him out of his chair, Steve follows after him without question.

 

They only hold onto each other long enough to make it back onto the casino floor. Bucky disengages like a rocket booster falling away from a space shuttle, drifting purposefully away. Steve doesn’t let it sting; they’re here to work anyway. The clamor of the casino bubbles up around them, loud and abrasive, the screeching clatter of a train that goes on forever. Activity has picked up since a few hours ago when Steve first walked through here, but it is Friday night, he supposes. He wasn’t the only one to arrive here today.

The line of Bucky’s back is still tense as Steve follows him through the clanging, light-up slot machines. Growing up in the city, neither of them has ever minded crowds, so it’s obvious something is still bothering him. He walks with purpose, though, so Steve doesn’t bother trying to pry it out of him. Despite Bucky’s promise to be more honest, Steve is sure he wouldn’t take too kindly to that right now.

Bucky steers them toward a long section of blackjack tables, half-circles stacked on top of each other like so many fish in a tin. They pass a few before they come across one with empty seats. It’s a busy weekend, or maybe it’s always like this. Steve wouldn’t know; they never came here.

Bucky turns to him and grimaces. “Do you mind?” he asks, gesturing at the table. “I’d just like to—just a hand or two.”

“Of course,” Steve says. Card playing was the one thing that could calm Bucky down sometimes. Steve had come home more than once to find him with a game of solitaire laid out on the kitchen table, quietly playing; those days Steve knew it was his turn to make dinner.

“Thanks,” Bucky says, and he takes a seat at the table.

Rather than take up space when he knows he won’t play, Steve huddles close to the back of Bucky’s chair. Bucky glances over his shoulder at him and rolls his eyes, but his cheek’s twitching. Steve takes that much and runs with it, folding his arms over Bucky’s chair back and leaning forward to peer over his shoulder. The tension almost visibly leaks out of Bucky’s spine when the dealer slides chips toward him across the felt.

“I won’t play long,” Bucky says, angling his head so Steve can hear.

“However long you like,” Steve murmurs, his eyes on Bucky’s fingers fondling his chips. The ceramic clack as the chips collide is rhythmic and familiar. Steve hadn’t been lying when he’d told Pierce he liked watching. He’s surprised how mesmerizing he still finds it—something to do with skills he can’t comprehend. Steve is good at a lot of things, but he’s shit at cards. The games never made sense to him, not even simple schoolyard ones, Go Fish or Old Maid. He always liked that Bucky understood something that was beyond him; that felt like magic. Bucky said he felt the same way when Steve painted—mutual bafflement.

The dealer slides Bucky his cards. He fingers their edges, but before he looks at them, he holds them up to Steve behind.

Steve’s brow furrows. “Bucky?”

“Would you?” Bucky says, his eyes on the table. “Please?”

Steve leans forward to press his lips to the card faces. A kiss, for good luck—he’s done it a hundred times before. Bucky used to swear up and down it made a difference, even though he had to have known that statistically, it didn’t. What made the difference was his sharp mind, but who was Steve to deny him what he wanted? He’d kiss till his lips chapped, if that’s what it took.

He hadn’t thought Bucky would want that again, but old habits die hard, he supposes.

Bucky wins. When he’s dealt a new hand, Steve taps his shoulder so he can kiss those cards too, and Bucky wins a second time. On his third hand, the dealer’s eyes start to narrow, so Bucky politely surrenders with a smile on his face.

“Guess your lucky charm there doesn’t always work,” the dealer say, nodding toward Steve.

“Works enough,” Bucky says. He pockets his chips and gets up from his seat, Steve shifting back enough to make room for him.

“Better?” Steve asks.

Bucky smiles, a faint thing. “Yeah. Thanks. Ready to look around?”

“Okay.”

The floor layout is a maze—deliberately confusing. If you can’t find your way to an exit, you may as well sit and play a few more rounds, try your luck at the slot machines just one more time. Doors that lead to the bowels of the resort blend well with the wallpaper. It’s easy not to notice them, just as it’s easy not to notice the broad-shouldered security staff in their bottle green ties.

They stroll casually, nosing in to watch a game of craps or roulette here or there, cheer people on with the rest of the crowd. It’d be easy not to notice them either.

Well-spaced throughout the cavernous room—dragon’s lair, Steve thinks, gold and glittering—are places labeled “cashier” in backlit letters. They drift close to a few, built like ticket booths at a movie theater, the uniformed employees behind a thick wall of glass. It’s bulletproof, Steve assumes, though why anyone would fight their way in so blatantly is beyond him. The booths are buried in the maze; there’d be no fighting your way back out.

That’s where the money is, though. Some of it anyway—most of it would be in the vault, buried deep in the ground. There’s enough money in the cashier booths to keep the place running smoothly. Even now Steve watches as a man slides a small roll of twenties into the deposit box. A cashier counts out a thick stack behind the glass while a woman looks on in wonder—that’s a few thousand she’s just won, easy. No problem for the casino, though. Like adventurers braving the cave in hopes of slaying the dragon and stealing its fortune, there’s more money that goes in than ever has the odds of coming back out. The house edge.

A few floating servers offer them complimentary champagne, ask if there’s anything else they’d like when Bucky brushes each one off. He says no and they scuttle away like birds along the shore, onto the next person. Free booze. It’d be so easy to get stuck here, mired in purgatory styled like heaven.

“Excuse me,” says a familiar voice, “would either of you gentleman care for a glass of champagne? Compliments of the house.”

Steve turns, already grinning, but Bucky pinches his arm hard through his suit jacket. _Cameras,_ he mouths. Steve schools his expression into polite indifference to match Bucky’s. It’s difficult when his best friend’s holding a tray of champagne flutes in his face. At least Sam’s eyes are twinkling too, like he’s in on the joke.

“No, we’re okay,” Bucky says.

“Oh, I insist,” Sam says.

“No, that’s—we’re fine.” The pinch in Bucky’s mouth is the subtlest _what the hell?_ Steve’s ever witnessed.

“Really,” Sam says, his voice dropping lower, “I insist.” He holds the toward closer toward them. When Steve peers closer, he spots one flute with a small piece of paper tucked underneath the base. Glancing up at Sam, he raises an eyebrow, and Sam nods. Steve takes the glass and the note comes with it like it’s been taped. The champagne bubbles over his tongue and down his throat as he takes a sip, before tipping the glass toward Sam in thanks. He fingers find the note’s edge and rip it free.

“My shift’s over at eleven,” Sam says, “so if you need anything else from me, it’ll have to be before then.”

Steve inhales, glancing at Bucky. “Okay.”

“Thank you,” Bucky says, leaning forward to peer at Sam’s name tag, “Frank.”

Sam almost breaks, his nose crinkling, but he manages to get away from them before Bucky’s deadpan seriousness can get the better of him.

Steve starts to unfold the note, but Bucky plucks it out of his fingers. “Hey—”

“Not here,” Bucky says, already steering him toward a hallway that leads to the bathrooms. He shoulders past the attendant and into the bathroom proper, Steve at his heels. The door of the handicap stall whines as Bucky yanks it open and shoves Steve inside. The bathroom’s other occupants’ scandalized looks disappear behind the floor-to-ceiling wood door.

For a moment Steve forgets what they’re doing here. His cheeks flame hot.

Bucky snorts half a laugh. “Settle down, tiger,” Bucky says, though clearly Steve would be the prey in this situation. Bucky pulls the note out and waves it under Steve’s nose—right. Sam’s secret message. Paper unfolded, Bucky reads aloud, “‘All-night diner in town. Meet me there.’ Well, he’s very specific.”

“I’m sure it’s worthwhile,” Steve says.

“What time is it anyway?”

Steve shakes his sleeve back to get a look at his watch. “Quarter to nine.”

“Really? Damn. He said eleven?”

Steve nods.

“Well, we did skip dinner.” Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You wanna head over now, get something to eat?”

Now that he’s reminded, Steve’s stomach does feel uncomfortably empty. “Are we done here, though?”

“Not much more we could see without a security badge, so.”

“Right.”

They ford the casino floor and make it into the lobby unscathed. The concierge tells them there’s an all-night diner just a few blocks from here; he offers to call them a cab, but Steve would rather walk. The rush of cold air as the automatic doors whir open hits Steve full in the face, ruffling his hair and shirt collar. They ought to have gone back to their room for coats, but it’s not so bad that they’ll freeze. It’s a short walk anyway. Steve marvels at the idea that the normality of a 24-hour diner could exist so close to the hulking lavishness of the Wyvern.

They order from laminated menus packed with too many options. Their waitress doesn’t bother to write anything down, pouring them coffee while she asks questions about their orders. With a tired smile, she whisks away to the kitchen, leaving them alone.

Bucky looks exhausted, too. The fluorescent lights aren’t doing him any favors, though truthfully, Steve’s not sure the last time he saw Bucky look well-rested.

“You all right?” Steve asks.

“Not here, Steve, please,” Bucky sighs. Then, seeming to decide he’d been too sharp, he reaches for two creamers and passes them to Steve with a tight-lipped smile. Steve’s coffee swirls and pales as he dumps them in his mug.

They eat in relative silence. There’s the clatter of the kitchen, a few other guests scattered among other tables. A radio plays classic rock from somewhere—and Steve can tell it’s a radio, because the staff doesn’t bother turning down the volume when the station cuts to commercial. _Save on your next dentist visit. We’ll give you cash for your lightly used clothes._

“Oh,” Bucky says, after swallowing a bite of turkey sandwich, “Ma wants you around for the holidays.”

Steve wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Really?”

“‘Course. I mean, you don’t have to if you’ve got somewhere else to go, but she wanted me to make sure you knew that you’re welcome.”

Steve had spent last Christmas alone without really thinking about it. It had felt like any other off day he’d had, which is sort of depressing, now that he thinks about it. He pushes his plate aside and meets Bucky’s eye. “You don’t mind?” he asks.

Bucky’s face is open as he says, “No, I don’t. So long as you want to be there.”

“I do,” Steve murmurs, dropping his gaze to the table. A glob of ketchup had dripped from his plate at some point. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

“So, um. What do you think Sam has to tell us?”

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

Steve frowns, glancing up. Bucky’s looking pointedly out the window, so Steve turns to see over his shoulder. On the sidewalk outside, Sam is approaching, another man walking alongside him. Sam’s brought a friend. He waves at them through the window as he passes toward the door that’s farther along. Then Sam and his friend—someone, a stranger—are at the edge of Steve and Bucky’s booth.

“Boys,” Sam says, “this is Thor Odinson.”

Steve almost laughs. The man is blond and broad-shouldered—broad in general, built like a ship. He’s every bit as Nordic as his name would imply, but his smile is more pleasant than what Steve might expect from a Viking as he leans in to shake Steve’s hand. His grip is incredibly strong.

“A pleasure,” he says, faintly accented.

“Likewise,” Steve says around a frown.

“You two going to make room?” Sam asks.

Bucky scoots to let Sam into his booth, and Thor slides in next to Steve. For a moment Bucky’s eyes flutter, dumbfounded. “I’m seeing double,” he says.

“What?” Steve asks.

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I don’t see it.”

Thor looks sideways at Steve. “A passing resemblance, maybe. It’s all to do with the—” He floats a hand over his chest, indicating its breadth.

“I don’t look like that,” Steve says, eyes widening. “No way. Bucky, do you think I look like that?”

“Anyway!” Sam interjects. “Thor works security at the Wyvern.”

“Well,” Thor hums.

“You explain it, then.”

“I handle the money,” Thor says, glancing between Bucky and Steve. “The casino has no direct funnel between the cashier booths and the vault—it’s all carried by hand in secure lockboxes.”

“Oh, holy shit,” Bucky breathes. “Really?”

“Mr. Pierce is oldschool. He finds a well-trained human more effective than a machine in most positions.”

Bucky’s eyes light with humorless irony. “That he does.”

“Once the lockboxes reach the vault, they’re counted by hand and keyed into the bank total. There’s a slip inside each box that tells the counter how much should be inside. Unless they’re large enough to cause alarm, any discrepancies are dealt with at the end of a shift. Usually everything comes out fine in the final count, so we don’t worry until we have to.”

“How long are shifts?” Steve asks.

“Eight hours.”

“So, a slow bleed over the whole shift—”

“Would be difficult to catch, given our system, yes.”

Bucky smiles at Steve across the table, grim but cautiously elated.

“What’s in it for you?” Steve asks Thor.

Thor’s expression shifts, settling somewhere between pained and resolved. “Mr. Pierce—my brother works for him. He doesn’t tell me what he does but I know it’s no good.”

“Odinson,” Bucky repeats, frowning. “Your brother… Loki?”

Thor nods. “He’s a troubled man. The money—well, it could help him, couldn’t it?”

Bucky’s eyes flick to Steve’s face just long enough for Steve to notice, before his gaze drops to the salt and pepper shakers.

“Okay,” Steve says to Thor, “let’s hear more about this money system.”

 

Bucky is still keyed up by the time they make it back to the hotel room. He blames it on the coffee in the same breath that he says, “This just seems too easy. Are we missing something? Do you feel like there’s something we’re just not getting, or is it really—just…”

Steve loses him as soon as Bucky lays hands on his own notes. He cracks the book open and sticks his nose in, still slowly pacing the room. His finger draws down the page to hold his place as he reads. The pages flick back and forth.

“Buck?” Steve asks.

All he gets in response is a soft grunt.

“Bucky, go lie down and do that.”

“What?” Bucky asks, glancing up briefly. “Oh, no, I’m on the couch.”

“I was going to—”

“Your back, Steve. Take the bed.”

He’s too tired to bother arguing, and it’s stupid anyway; Bucky’s right. If Steve slept on that couch, he’d wake up with a spine more crooked than—well, than they are. He sighs and relents, muttering a goodnight that goes unacknowledged. He keeps the French doors cracked just slightly and dresses down before climbing gratefully into the expansive bed.

A few hours of sleep are all he manages before he wakes in need of the bathroom. On his way back to the bed, Steve notices the light is still on in the living area. It wouldn’t be the first time Bucky’s fallen asleep without turning off the lamp. He pushes the door gently open.

Bucky is on the couch, still fully dressed, still awake. A notebook splays open across his thighs, its pages holding from how much he must have loosened the binding. He’s not looking at it anymore, though; instead his head is draped over the back of the couch, his eyes on the rotating ceiling fan.

“Bucky?” Steve asks.

Bucky sits up with a start, then his face relaxes into apology. “Go back to bed, sweetheart.”

“It’s two in the morning.”

“I know.”

Steve frowns at him, sleep-addled brain still trying to catch up. “You go to bed.”

Bucky snorts a laugh. “Christ. You awake over there?”

“Yes,” Steve grumbles, rubbing at his eyes. “Just come to bed, won’t you?”

“Steve—”

“It’s a California king, Bucky, we’ll both fit. You need to sleep.”

“I’ve just been thinking.”

“Your brain will still work in the morning.”

“How do you know?”

Steve huffs, rolling his eyes. “I’m tired,” he announces. “I’m going back to bed.” He turns and stalks back into the bedroom, leaving the door pointedly open. It takes a few minutes. Steve is settled under the covers again, curled up and warm, by the time the lamp cuts out with a dull _click._ Bucky rustles through undressing, the zipper of his suitcase loud in the dark. Then he eases into the bed, at the far edge but still there. The moonlight bleeding between a crack in the curtains glows just bright enough for Steve to make out his face. He sighs, contented, and closes his eyes.

“Steve?” Bucky asks.

“Mm-hmm?”

“I want to hurt him.”

“You—what?” Steve blinks more awake, shifting onto his side to face Bucky.

“Pierce. This… our plan, it doesn’t hurt him enough.”

“You want to hurt him?”

Bucky stays quiet for a long time. Then, slowly, with feeling, “Yes.”

Steve sits up and turns on the bedside lamp. Bucky is still lying on his side, watching Steve with his mouth in a firm line. “Do you mean that?” Steve asks.

“Yes.”

Steve feels himself nodding before his mind quite catches up. Then he’s nodding in earnest, and he says, “I have a few ideas.”

“Yeah,” Bucky huffs. “I know you do. I found those notes you had Nat put together.”

Steve winces, both at his own hypocrisy and his inability to keep it properly concealed. Natasha had put two and two together the moment she had set foot in Steve’s apartment. She’d offered to look into the possibility; Steve hadn’t refused her.

“I should’ve said something.”

“Yes,” Bucky says, “you should’ve. I like it.”

“You—really?”

“It’s stupid, but you always did have style. And Nat thinks it can work, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. We’ll tell the team tomorrow.”

Still taken aback at this change of course, Steve lies back down to stare at the ceiling.  He suddenly has no desire to sleep. Bucky doesn’t comment about him leaving the light on, so maybe he feels the same way.

“Steve,” Bucky says, the beginning of a question.

“What will you do, after?” Steve interrupts. He turns his head on the pillow. Bucky’s hand is sprawled on the bedspread, midway between them, ungloved. It’ll always be scarred, Steve supposes, but he hasn’t been as hesitant with it lately.

“I—I’m not sure yet,” Bucky says, frowning. “Probably go away for a while.”

“You will?” Steve breathes.

“I’ll have to, won’t I?”

“I could come with you.” He’s not sure what makes him say it, but the downward twist in Bucky’s brow is enough to make him regret it before he’s even finished speaking.

“I don’t know. Someone’s got to look after Ma.”

Steve’s eyes slip closed, and he turns his head away so Bucky can’t see the way the rejection is making his face contort. He ought to have expected it. They’ve been making progress—sometimes he even feels good about them again—but they’re not there yet. Of course not. He’d been rash, as usual.   

“Steve,” Bucky repeats in a whisper. “Sweetheart.”

“Why do you still call me that?”

A too-long pause. “Habit, I guess. Please look at me.”

Steve stays immobile, unwilling or embarrassed, he’s not sure. Maybe he’s angry; maybe he’s still heartbroken—it’s hard to tell the difference these days. He should go sleep on the couch, trade one misery for another. At least he knows it would only take about a day for his back to right itself.

Fingertips brush against his collarbone. Steve flinches and starts to roll away, but Bucky’s hand finds the edge of his jaw and firmly coaxes him to turn. Bucky looks upset about something. Steve can feel his own traitorous lip starting to wobble in the face of it.

Bucky’s fingers caress soothingly over Steve’s cheek, catching on the light stubble there. “I didn’t say no,” Bucky says. “Let’s just—let’s get through the holidays, and this whole mess, and then we’ll talk, okay? I have—I need to think. But I’m not saying no.”

“We’ll talk?” Steve asks. His heart gives a horrible, hopeful lurch.

“Yeah.” Bucky strokes Steve’s face, his watery eyes and hardset jaw a contradiction. His fingers trail to Steve’s chin and then, cautiously, gently, he presses the pad of his thumb to the bow of Steve’s lips. Steve can nearly taste him. “We’ll have a chat, sweetheart, just the two of us.”

His hand withdraws, and Bucky curls in on himself, purposefully breaking the moment. After a long minute, Steve flicks out the light. They sleep on opposite sides of the bed, a careful distance between them, but when Steve wakes the next morning, Bucky is still there.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the rating increase for this chapter. The rest of this story will be live by the end of the weekend! Thank you to everyone who has left kudos and comments so far—y'all are the best.

The last of the holiday cheer fades into sharp-minded focus. It’s been a calamitous month, like juggling kerosene-soaked balls with a lit match between your teeth. Only through sheer luck did Steve manage to keep anything from catching on fire. He’s not sure he’s staying at his job for much longer, but he wouldn’t want to leave on a sour note, and holidays are busy at the gallery.  _ Merry Christmas, darling, here’s an atrocious sculpture for the foyer. _

Maria has started asking for his opinion on incoming artists. He hates to think he might have to leave—but he hates to think he might be staying, too. The whole thing is complicated.

The holidays themselves were a clutter of heavy meals and discarded wrapping paper. Bucky’s family doesn’t do Christmas, technically, or Chanukah either—his parents had decided a long time ago to keep the whole thing secular. So it’s “the holidays.” They still celebrate on December 25 because Freddie likes the atmosphere of most of the city closing down, and besides, everything’s closed down, so what else is there to do? 

Steve joined Bucky at his parents’ place for a gift exchange—mostly sweets and homemade crafts, as little money spent as possible. It’s a nice tradition, Steve thinks, but requires a lot of forethought. There’s no running out to the store the night before when you’re giving gifts to the Barneses. 

He got a cable knit sweater from Freddie, rich brown and soft to the touch. He handed her a spiral-bound notebook in return, the pages filled with his mother’s old recipes, carefully copied in his neatest penmanship with a few doodles here and there. The recipes were probably safer in Freddie’s hands than his own. When she cried, he’d decided he had done alright.

He got a few other baubles from Bucky’s dad and his sister Becca and her husband. Steve’s a one-trick pony and gives most of them art in return.

He hadn’t known what to expect from Bucky—or what to give him. What’s an appropriate gift for your ex-partner who still invites you to his family holidays? There’s a fine balance, one they’ve been having trouble with the past month. Steve could see Bucky actively working to keep a professional distance between them even as his eyes lingered on Steve for longer and longer each time. Steve understands; there’s a lot at stake right now, a lot going on, and trying to figure  _ this _ out on top of everything else would surely end in disaster. Besides, Steve’s not sure he trusts it to be true just yet.

He settled on a card. He decorated it himself, a delicately detailed pattern of rich blues and fine silvers on the front cover. Inside, he’d written a little more than he meant to, but Bucky’s breath had gone shallow as he read it right there in the living room, surrounded by everyone.

Steve can’t remember everything he’d written, but what it amounted to was simple:  _ I forgive you. I’m sorry. I’m ready to talk when you are. _

That was the best gift he could think of. Bucky hadn’t reacted to it save for excusing himself to the bathroom for a short minute. He’d come back and given Steve his present in return, a lumpy-looking scarf in blue and red. He was finally letting Freddie teach him how to knit; it was the first thing he’d finished. Steve put it on and didn’t take it off till he went to bed that night.

At least the plan’s in place. The rearranging had gone over like a storm breaking up on the mountains, but eventually Steve had gotten everyone on the same page again. Now it was only a matter of waiting, checking and double checking for sprung leaks. There’s been nothing; Pierce is safely out of town, vacationing on the coast of France. 

Everything has been holding steady. Steve has felt like he’s been holding his breath for three weeks now. All it would take is one little snag—

He understands Bucky’s arguments against overconfidence, but Steve thinks he might prefer his method of blundering ahead regardless of consequences. Ignorance truly is bliss. That said, he knows Bucky’s right, but understanding every element of what they’re getting themselves into only proves to make him anxious. He’s barely touched the tin of gingerbread Becca gave him, when usually he’d have them gone in under an hour.

The first full week in January flits in crisp and bright. It hasn’t snowed in a while, which is good; it only clogs the streets with dirty slush and makes the city that much more sluggish. The days pass in a rush, all of them packed into the warehouse going over the plan again and again. They’ll be separated on the day of, so it’s important they have the schedule down. One screw comes loose and the whole operation is liable to shake apart underneath them. Steve feels a bit like a drill sergeant, but the focus makes him feel better himself; maybe he missed a calling.

They wrap up in time the night before for everyone to get home, get rest, get themselves in place for the morning. Second shift starts at 8 a.m. sharp. Clint packs up breezily and pushes Bruce out the door ahead of him. Sam and Thor had left already to get back up to White Plains.

Tony had never shown up at all, but he hadn’t needed to. His money’s been spent. Now he’s just waiting on the return on investment.

Natasha and Bucky hang around to help Steve pack everything down. Tomorrow it will be as if they’d never been here at all. There’s not much to do, thankfully—Steve runs a tight ship.

“How are we all feeling?” Natasha asks drolly, untacking a map from the wall.

Bucky doesn’t bother responding. His tense, jerky movements read loud and clear.

“Ask me again in about” —Steve glances at his watch— “twenty hours.”

Natasha’s laugh is brighter than Steve feels he deserves for that one, but he smiles back at her.

“Thank you again,” he says. “For all you’ve done.”

“Now what did I do?” she says airily, already drifting toward the door. She winks as she pauses in the threshold. “Sleep tight, boys. Big day tomorrow.”

Steve and Bucky finish up in silence, carrying a handful of boxes down to the dumpster outside. It’s set to be carried away first thing in the morning. Steve tosses his boxes in with a grunt, then wipes his hands on his pants and checks the time.

“Well,” he says, “guess I’ll see you bright and early, Buck.”

“Oh, um.”

At the hesitation is his tone, Steve glances up. Bucky stands with his face screwed up uncomfortably. “What?” Steve asks.

“You can say no, but I thought, well—maybe it might be easier if I stayed at yours tonight,” Bucky says. “Just so no one’s asking me questions in the morning. If that’s alright with you.”

Steve’s mouth twists into a surprised frown. This is—well, it’s not a wrench in the plan, but it’s certainly unexpected. When Steve gives no immediate answer, Bucky starts to deflate, already backing away along the sidewalk.

“Never mind, it’s stupid,” he mutters.

“No,” Steve rushes to say, holding up a hold. “No—sure. Of course. You can stay with me, it’s no problem.”

Bucky brightens around the eyes, but still sounds cautious when he asks, “You sure?”

“Yes. Please stay with me.”

“Okay.”

 

As it turns out Bucky had already had an overnight bag with him, so this wasn’t some of-the-moment request. Of course it wasn’t; Steve knew him better than to think for a second it was impulse. Why he’d waited till the last minute to ask, Steve wasn’t sure, but he was glad to have him. Ordering takeaway for one enough times starts to depress a person. That, and he’d never been alone the night before a job before. It will be good to have the company.

The hallway is neater than it had been, everything cleared out and ready for the morning. The smell of paint still lingers. Probably it’s in the carpet fibers and will take weeks to fade. Steve’s used to it by now, but Bucky’s nose wrinkles as he steps through the doorway.

“Christ, don’t you use a fan?” Bucky asks.

Steve shrugs. “Oils smell bad.”

“I remember,” Bucky says, like he wishes he didn’t.

They hang their coats on the hooks by the door. Bucky takes his gloves off and shoves them in a coat pocket while Steve unwinds the scarf from around his neck.

“I can’t believe you actually wear that thing,” Bucky says.

“What, this?” Steve’s fingers catch on the soft, multicolored fabric. It must have taken Bucky hours and hours, with how stiff his hand gets after a lot of use.

“It’s kind of awful.”

“You gave it to me.”

Bucky snorts. “Touche.”

“No, I—” Steve takes a breath. This hallway is too cramped; Bucky’s practically on top of him. “I mean, you gave it to me, so that’s why I wear it.”

“Oh.” Bucky frowns. The color in his cheeks might only be from the lingering cold. He stalks off down the hall toward the living room. “You want Chinese?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Sure,” Steve huffs and follows after him.

Forty-five minutes later they’re settled at either end of the couch. Takeout boxes litter the coffee table, too many of them because Bucky can never decide if he wants chicken or beef. Usually Steve would make him flip a coin, but tonight he’d said  _ what the hell. _ There’s a slight chance they’ll both be going to jail tomorrow, so why not indulge? Though there were limits to their indulgence—Bucky had refused to let Steve open a bottle of wine for fear of having a headache in the morning.

They eat with the television on, the low hum of anticipation almost audible in the room. It feels so much like old times that Steve nearly forgets that it isn’t, that it’s now, that everything has changed. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Bucky is comfortable on Steve’s couch, his socked feet curled underneath him. They’re going to talk soon, and his chopsticks keep digging through Steve’s plate.

The credits of the movie they’d been half-watching start rolling at half past eight. Bucky stretches and yawns, but makes no move to get up. If anything he settles deeper into the couch, slumped down in the corner. His eyes slip closed, and—right. He’ll be sleeping here.

“You tired?” Steve asks. “I can clear out.”

Bucky shakes his head. The movement jostles his hair, strands of it falling over his face into his eyes. Steve aches to reach forward and fix it for him, but he’s being patient. It’s so tempting, though. He distracts himself by gathering up the leftovers and taking them to the fridge. When he returns to the couch, Bucky hasn’t moved except to turn his head and look out the window. The light of the television throws his face into strange, flickering relief.

“We could watch another movie, I guess,” Steve suggests, reaching for the remote to see what’s on. Something light-hearted, he thinks—a slapstick comedy.

“I’ve got a train ticket,” Bucky says.

Steve flicks past  _ Law & Order _ reruns. Too on the nose. “What?”  

“I’ve got a train ticket,” Bucky repeats. “Leaving day after next, headed west.”

The remote slips out of Steve’s hand and into his lap. His spine straightens, and he turns to Bucky with a pinch in his brow. “You’re leaving?”

“I said I’d have to.”

“So soon?”

“That’s the point, Steve. It’s not something that I want to take chances on.”

“Right.” Steve shakes himself loose, though he can feel the tension still perched at the nape of his neck. Bucky had said that was his plan—skipping town for a while. Steve hadn’t thought about it much. He hadn’t wanted to; he’d only just gotten him back. But it’s reality now, because Bucky has a train ticket, headed west. Steve picks up the remote again, digging his thumb hard into the button that changes the channel.

“You could come too, if you want,” Bucky says.

This time, Steve turns the television off altogether and twists on the couch till he’s facing Bucky. His face gives nothing away, one way or the other, but Steve is certain he hadn’t misheard him. “Do you want me to?” Steve asks.

Bucky’s head tips sideways, noncommittal, but he says, “I bought a second ticket.”

“For me?”

“Who else?”

Steve’s face folds into a scowl. “Bucky.”

“What?”

“Either you want me to come with you, or you don’t.”

“It’s your choice, sweetheart. You’ve got your job and everything—I wasn’t sure you’d want to, but I thought just in case.”

Steve’s eyes close heavily, and he feels himself start shaking his head before he consciously decides that’s what he’s going to do.

“Oh,” Bucky breathes, pained. “Well, that’s fine. I think it’s refundable—”

“No,” Steve interrupts. “Bucky. Give me a second.” Bucky waits for him, quiet, till Steve can get a hold of himself and open his eyes. “Do you want me to come with you, or don’t you?”

“I bought you a ticket,” Bucky says, but the downward tilt of his brow makes Steve sure that Bucky understands that’s not what he’s asking. Steve waits him out, and eventually, Bucky’s face falls and he drops his gaze to his hands. “Look, Steve, I didn’t want to do this yet.”

“You brought it up.”

“I know, but I thought—tomorrow we’d be busy, and the day after is when we—when I leave, so it’s ask now or not at all, right? But can we just hold off on the rest of it, just a few more days, till this whole thing is behind us?”

Steve wants so badly to give him what he wants, always, but— “No. Just tell me, Bucky. Do you want me, or don’t you?”

Bucky’s chest shudders on an exhale. He doesn’t look up just yet. “Did you mean what you wrote, in the card?”

“Which part?”

“All of it. That you forgive me.”

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”

Bucky’s lips twitch, and he lifts his head. His eyes are bright, shining blue. “Yeah. I guess I just didn’t expect you to come around so quickly.”

“Why?”

“Because I really hurt you, Steve.”

“I hurt you, too.”

“Not a contest.” Bucky pauses, biting his lip. “I haven’t been totally honest you with about something.”

Something catches in Steve’s throat. He swallows it down and says, “Then be honest now.”

“I meant it, the reasons I did what I did—I wasn’t lying.” Bucky doesn’t repeat the reasons but they hang heavy in the air between them. “There was more than that, though. I told you Pierce got me released early. But he—during the trial, he sought me out, told me he could get the charges dropped if I worked for him, that I’d never see a day in prison. I told him to go to hell. I’d rather be convicted.”

Bucky snorts a laugh, but Steve doesn’t see anything funny about it. Taking a deep breath, Bucky lays his right hand over the left, stroking at the skin, permanently disfigured. It doesn’t look so bad nowadays, Steve thinks, but he knows the burn scars can get tight and uncomfortable. He’ll always have them.

“I can’t say for sure it was him,” Bucky continues, “but it felt like  _ someone _ was trying to make my life a living hell while I was in prison. Got to a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t strong enough. I wanted out. So I looked up Pierce’s number and asked him to help me.”

“Bucky,” Steve gasps.

“I don’t expect you to understand, Steve, and obviously I regret it now, but at the time—at the time it was all I could think to do. The tradeoff didn’t seem so bad. I was already a criminal, what did it matter? But then I started to realize that once you’re in, there’s no way out. He’s got this whole  _ network _ of—of… underground players, people like me and Thor’s brother, keeping him safe at the top.”

Steve wants to reach out and touch him, hold Bucky’s face between his hands till that haunted look fades from his eyes. He keeps his hands in his lap, clenched into fists.

“So you see,” Bucky says, voice clipped now as if he was holding back emotion, “I couldn’t let you get tangled up in all that. I wanted to shield you from it. Should have known better, I guess.”

“Buck,” Steve repeats. He’s lost for words. Some part of him feels he should be angry about this, but he can’t seem to bother. There’s just a soft ache in his chest that feels a lot like—well, like love. Hearing all this, though it pains him, is healing somehow. Beneath all of Bucky’s callousness, there had always been caring, too.

“Do you—Steve,” Bucky says, throat working, “you said you forgive me, but do you still? I know you don’t like me protecting you like that, but can you understand why I need to sometimes?”

Compelled by something—courage, the mood, the shake in Bucky’s voice—Steve reaches out for him with slow fingers. He brushes the hair out of Bucky’s face, grazing his cheekbone as he tucks the strangs behind Bucky’s ear. It’s getting longer, shaggy; soon it’ll be long enough for a stump of a ponytail. Steve wants to bury his fingers in it and hold, but he drops his hand to lay over Bucky’s instead, folded together in his lap.

“Who said I minded you protecting me?” he breathes.

“You. About a thousand times.”

Steve concedes the point with a faint smile. “I still forgive you.”

“You’re not mad?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Do you want me to be mad?”

“No, you’re just—you’re taking this all pretty well. I expected a fit.”

“I’m trying here, Bucky.” Steve grips his hand tighter, the warmth of Bucky’s skin stoking a fire in Steve’s blood. “You are, too. I don’t want to be mad at you for telling me the truth. That okay?”

Understanding washes over Bucky’s face, smoothing out the pinched lines. He smiles, too. “Yeah, sweetheart. Thank you.” He swallows. “I forgive you, too. For—for all of it, the stuff that was your fault and the stuff I know you think is. You’re forgiven.”

Steve tucks his chin to his chest, flooded with warmth. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to hear that. Bucky’s hand turns over in his grip. The angle is awkward, but he gets their fingers laced together and holds. His nails bite into the skin above Steve’s knuckles—not painful, just sharp enough to remind Steve he’s there.

“So,” Steve says. It’s a poor transition; he doesn’t know where to go from here.

“Will you come with me?” Bucky asks. “I don’t—Steve, I don’t know what this is yet. But I want us to figure it out, start over if we can. I was stupid to think that leaving you was a solution I could live with, and I don’t want to do it again. Will you please come?”

“Yes. Bucky, yes.”

His answer lingers in the air like an echo. Bucky’s lips fall open around a breath, like Steve had reached in and pulled it out of him. For a moment, Steve is caught—both of them are, mesmerized into absolute stillness. Steve could be reading this incorrectly. He doesn’t want to step too far and hurt himself again. But he sees it, the instant Bucky’s eyes flick down to his mouth. The glance lasts half a second, even less, but it’s enough.

They meet in the middle.

It’s a crashing together more than a kiss. Steve’s lip smarts when their momentum drives Bucky’s teeth too hard against him. It’s rough, a misfire, but neither of them pull away to recalculate. Bucky sucks in a breath against him and presses yet closer, firmer, as if backing away is an impossibility. 

Steve doesn’t mind. It’s been far, far too long.

After a frenzied minute of too much teeth and tongue, Steve lays a hand at Bucky’s throat, thumb at his chin. With slow movements he tries to gentle them, slow this down, make it last. A whine of protest rumbles through Bucky’s throat. His hands, tangled in Steve’s sweater, can’t seem to decide if they’d rather push or pull. Steve’s efforts have only made Bucky kiss him with renewed hunger. All his earlier reluctance to speak plainly doesn’t apply to his body. Bucky knows what he wants, and how he wants it.

“Honey,” Steve gasps when Bucky breaks off to start mouthing along Steve’s jaw, down his neck. Steve has his fingers in Bucky’s hair, nails at his scalp, not doing as much to discourage him as he really ought. “Bucky, hey.”

“What,” Bucky slurs. His mouth’s too busy to enunciate properly.

“If you keep this up, I’m gonna be done in about two minutes.”

That gets Bucky to pause, but then his breath gusts onto Steve’s damp skin as he laughs. He pulls back enough to meet Steve’s eye. There’s a wicked glint in his eye, but something soft underneath it. “You gonna come in your pants, Rogers?” he asks.

“If I do, it’s your fault.”

“Mmm,” Bucky says, sliding forward till he’s half in Steve’s lap, one knee slung across his thighs. Surely he can feel Steve’s half-hard dick against his leg. His left hand smooths down Steve’s sweater and comes to rest at the hem, fingers fiddling with the waistband of Steve’s jeans. “Been a while for you, huh?”

“There’s been no one else,” Steve says, his already pink cheeks glowing warmer. “Just you, Buck—there’s only ever been you.”

Steve can’t see his reaction—Bucky’s face is buried in Steve’s neck—but he feels the shiver that shakes along his spine. He presses closer, and Steve can feel him against his hip.

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes. His nose draws a line up toward Steve’s, and Bucky kisses him again, soft and toffee-warm. “You’re it for me too, kid.”

Whatever that’s meant to confirm—the gentle pitch of Bucky’s voice makes Steve believe he means something more. They’re still healing. A few searing kisses the night before a job doesn’t mean they’re fixed, that they’re picking right back up where they left off two years ago. Neither of them can deny that chasm of time, what it’s done to them, what they’ve done to each other. But, Steve realizes, with Bucky warm and alive and  _ here _ with him again, there had never been a moment where he truly doubted that he still loved Bucky. He’s a constant creature, his heart even more than the rest of him. He won’t say so, not until he knows Bucky is ready to hear it, but the feeling breaks over him like the dawn.

Now, he believes that Bucky never stopped loving him either. 

Steve pulls him closer, into his lap, and presses his face into the hollow of Bucky’s neck. His natural smell is strongest here, woody and familiar. The thin skin is body-hot against Steve’s forehead, Bucky’s pulse hammering away. Bucky’s fingers curl over the nape of Steve’s neck, his lips flattening Steve’s hair. Steve drinks him in, inhaling deep as he starts a slow path up Bucky’s neck, back to his mouth.

They stay that way for a long time, trading slow kisses, the heat on low. Steve could simmer here forever with Bucky in his lap, just getting reacquainted with the slick slide of his lips, the hot press of his tongue. Something between them eventually starts to intensify, though—Bucky’s knees splay wider on the couch so he can sink even closer to Steve. He starts that low whining in the back of his throat again. The sound resonates in Steve’s mouth, down into the cavity of him, reverberating like an echo till he groans softly into response.

When Bucky breaks off to rest, their foreheads together, Steve murmurs, “We should go to bed.”

Bucky licks his lips, nodding. “Guess so,” he sighs, a bit breathless. “It’s late.”

Steve chuckles roughly and slides his hands down Bucky’s back, into his back pockets. “Bed, not sleep, Buck.”

“Oh.” A tremor passes through Bucky.  _ “Oh. _ Yes—yes, let’s go.” 

He’s up and dragging Steve off the couch before Steve has the chance to blink. They tangle together again down the hall, an uncoordinated dance with Steve leading, shedding clothes to get hands on bare skin. Somehow they make it to the bedroom without anyone’s toes getting squashed. Once they’re through the door, though, Bucky trips over a stray pair of shoes. He yelps, scrabbling for Steve, but he’s already too far off balance. His face contorts into comic terror. Luckily, the room’s small enough that the only place for him to fall is directly onto the bed. Even though his eyes are wide with shock, his mostly naked body still makes a pretty picture splayed haphazardly on Steve’s bedspread.

“Oh my God,” Steve says, laughing as he crawls onto the bed over Bucky. “Are you okay?”

“You asshole.” Bucky shoves at his shoulder, trying to manhandle him off, but he’s grinning. “You didn’t even try to catch me.”

“Want me to kiss it and make it better?”

“Jesus Christ, you’re awful.” Bucky gives one more half-hearted push before he collapses against the bed. His eyes slip closed like he’s warring with something. “Please.”

“Okay.”

Steve plucks at the hem of Bucky’s briefs, the last piece of clothing between Steve and the whole of him, and drags them down Bucky’s thighs. He tastes better than he smells.

_ “Shit,” _ Bucky gasps as Steve sucks him down like he’s parched. His fingers thread into Steve’s hair, holding him tight, guiding him into easing up before he chokes himself. “Steve, sweetheart, Steve.”

Steve hums around him in acknowledgment, taking the base of Bucky’s dick in hand to hold him steady. Bucky hisses. His toes curl and flex, brushing against Steve’s calves. Steve had missed this so much, more than he had realized—Bucky heavy and hot in his mouth, pleased and sighing, completely at Steve’s mercy. This is the most delicate part of him—physically anyway—and it’s still a strange power trip that Bucky trusts Steve enough to let him settle between his legs and touch him here. He could hurt him so very easily. He knows that he never would.

Bucky’s eyes never leave his face. The blue heat of his stare burns into Steve, turning his cheeks warm pink. The flush isn’t from embarrassment—far from it. Bucky’s pleasure has always turned Steve on more than anything. His tongue flickering over the head of Bucky’s cock, Steve’s hips sink to the mattress, working against it.

“Steve, I’m—” Bucky cuts off with a sharp breath.

Steve licks a slow, wet stripe up his shaft. “Don’t you want to?” he murmurs.

“I’m—I don’t—”

A pinch forms in Steve’s brow. His spine bends, lifting him enough to meet Bucky’s eye. “What is it, sugar? You don’t want to come in my mouth?”

Ruddy patches of color on Bucky’s cheeks match him to Steve. He smiles, looking bowled over, his breath uneven. “What’ll we do about you?” he asks.

“Might not be much to figure out,” Steve says and shifts his hips with purpose.

But Bucky takes him by the chin. “I want to see you.”

“You better come quick then.”

Steve envelopes him again, and Bucky whines long and low. He cups Steve’s face between his palms, and he must be able to feel his own dick moving against Steve’s hollowed cheeks. Steve holds nothing back now, his hand slick with his own spit by now, swallowing around him. Bucky shudders underneath him and struggles not to thrust. The color is spreading down his chest. It won’t be long now, if Steve still knows how to read him.

Bucky’s mouth drops open, his brow turns slack, and Steve braces himself. Sure enough, moments later, that familiar salty taste pours into Steve’s mouth. He smooths a hand over Bucky’s tense abdomen, his lips gentle as he works him through it. He doesn’t swallow, not yet, letting some of Bucky’s come slide back down his shaft, down Steve’s chin. Bucky groans and curses—he hated how much that got to him, which is exactly why Steve did it.

He pulls off with a wet pop, wipes his mouth on Bucky’s thigh, and keeps licking at him till Bucky starts to soften and he has to push Steve’s head away.

“Jesus fucking Mary, Steve,” he says. “I forgot.”

“No, you didn’t.”

Bucky huffs a weak, spent laugh. “No, I didn’t.” 

He pulls at Steve’s shoulder, coaxing him up. Bucky’s thumb catches the come threatening to drip from Steve’s chin. His fingers wet, he reaches down and wraps his hand around Steve’s hot-hard dick. Steve’s mouth hangs open as he pants against Bucky’s cheek. Bucky tries to kiss him, but it’s mostly ineffective—Steve is too close to do more than gasp into his mouth. Bucky’s grip is as sure and confident as ever.

When the tightening in his gut reaches its peak, Steve gets an arm under himself to prop his body up over Bucky. Bucky’s pupils are blown out in the dim light of the bedroom. He quirks an eyebrow and matches it with a twist of his wrist.

“Shit,” Steve whines. “Bucky, Bucky—”

A choked groan cuts off his words as his orgasm overtakes him. It’s a struggle to keep his eyes open through it, but Bucky had wanted to watch. Steve spills between them, Bucky working him through it, and his groan tapers off into a soft whimper. He hadn’t forgotten either—not any of it, not for a moment—but the immensity of feeling still overwhelms him. His arm starts to tremble from holding him up as the last of his pleasure fades like the tide going out.

Even once Steve is done, Bucky doesn’t let him go. His thumb digs at Steve’s slit like he’s waiting for more—payback. “Fuck,” Steve hisses, collapsing sideways as he tries to escape.

Bucky just laughs, the sound warm and rich as honey, and wraps his arms around Steve’s shoulders to keep him where he is. “Christ, I missed you.”

“Mm,” Steve hums, wriggling closer and slinging a leg between Bucky’s. “I know.”

Bucky’s chest expands and deflates beneath Steve’s cheek. “Steve, I’m—”

“You don’t have to say it,” Steve says. “I know. You’re here now. That’s all I care about.”

“I hope you care about this nonsense we’re doing tomorrow, too.”

“Oh, right, that.” Steve smiles and plants a kiss to Bucky’s clavicle. “You setting an alarm?”

“Always do, sweetheart.”

“Do you think we’re ready?” Steve’s voice is already slurred as he teeters on the edge of sleep. Whatever happens tomorrow, whatever happens afterward, he’s glad that they let themselves have this. Having Bucky in his bed again feels so deliriously good, and right. This mattress is too big for one body. 

They ought to get under the covers. They will, eventually, but Steve finds he’s warm enough without them right now.

“As we’ll ever be,” Bucky says, and Steve drifts into a deep sleep with Bucky’s lips pressed to his forehead.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s a simple operation, all things considered—two vans loaded and waiting. Steve, bedecked in simple khakis and dress shirt, takes the passenger’s seat of one. Bucky climbs through the sliding back door into the other. The last Steve sees of him is a wry half-smile and a cautious wave before the doors slide closed again and hide him from view.

“Morning, chief,” Clint Barton says from the driver’s seat.

Steve frowns at him. “Chief?”

“I’m still workshopping it. Big Hoss? Captain? Red Leader?”

“Clint,” Steve sighs, “just call me Steve, please.”

“Fine, fine.” He cranks the engine and pulls away from the curb. “Everyone all set?”

“Let’s check.” Steve taps his finger to the comm in his ear—discreet, developed by Stark, pried off of him by Banner. The slight fizz of static lets Steve knows he’s live. “How are we this morning?” he asks.

“That’s still unnerving,” comes Sam’s voice, fuzzy over the distance. “But we’re good, ready.”

“Roger that,” Steve says. Bucky laughs at him over the line. It’s good he’s feeling loose enough to laugh, but Steve’s not supposed to appreciate the undermining of his authority. He bites down on a smile. “Barnes? Banner? Everything online?”

The second van follows behind at a safe, inconspicuous distance. In the side view mirrors, Steve can still see the flash of Natasha’s hair in the side view mirrors, but soon their routes will split and take them into the city at different angles. Traffic is already rough, especially this early in the morning, but Clint doesn’t seem to be having trouble with it. He has his window rolled down, one hand lolling out through the opening.

“Working on it,” Bucky says.

“Should be fine, Steve,” Banner adds.

“Let me know if anything changes. Nat, you’re good?”

“As good as one can be in this traffic,” Natasha sighs.

They drive in silence for ten minutes, taking a stop-and-go path along the BQE. Steve checks his watch again and again, till Clint reaches over and smacks his hand. Steve garbles a protest, but Clint just gives him a withering look. Sighing, Steve leans his elbow on the armrest and stares out the window as Brooklyn passes them sluggishly by.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice, soft. Steve starts and sits up straighter. “Switched us to a private line. How are you doing?”

“I’m—good,” he says, low, turning toward the window so Clint can’t see his mouth moving. “Good.”

He means it, for the most part. He had woken up this morning to the blaring beep of Bucky’s alarm. In his sleep-addled daze, he expected Bucky’s side of the mattress to already be empty, but it hadn’t been. The bed shifted, creaking lightly, as Bucky smacked at his phone till the alarm went quiet. Then he’d dragged Steve on top of him and kissed his ear, his cheek, till he finally found Steve’s mouth in the dark. They didn’t have time for a slow morning, but that had been more than enough.

Steve glances at the mirror. The second van has disappeared into traffic, lost somewhere behind them. But Bucky’s still in his ear: “Just checking.”

“Are you good?”

“I’ll be good when this is over,” Bucky says. His voice sounds flat, but Steve knows him better than that.

“We’re almost there,” Steve says. “You’re almost out.”

“Yeah. I’m—what I said, about—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, please, just let me talk.” Bucky’s voice drops lower. “Oh, we’re online. Okay. Look, Steve, I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For doing this for me.”

“Oh, am I allowed to admit that now?”

“Shut up, asshole, I’m trying to express my gratitude.”

Steve bites back a laugh, but the mirth is brief. His face falls. “How about you thank me once we’re on that train, alright?”

“Okay. Yeah. Nine o’clock—don’t be late.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

The fuzzy noise in Steve’s ear cuts out, replaced with the slosh of blood in his ears. It sounds too loud, even to him. He rubs a hand at his chin, shaved smooth this morning, and sighs. Clint glances at him as they change lanes, still chugging steadily uptown.

“So, Chief,” Clint says slowly.

Steve goes pink. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Only enough.” Clint shrugs and taps his hearing aid. “You got a little Bonnie and Clyde thing going on with Barnes?”

A flash of an image fills Steve’s mind from a movie he’s only seen once—Faye Dunaway’s body hanging lifeless out of a bullet-riddled car, Warren Beatty bloodied on the ground beside it. He shivers. “Christ, I hope not.”

Clint claps him on the shoulder. “No going down in a blaze of glory today, huh, Chief?”

 

Pierce’s home is made of old stone, pale and unassuming, tucked into a quiet, affluent neighborhood of uptown Manhattan. A single-family residence—main entrance at street level, garage entrance around the side. 

“Bucky?” Steve asks.

“You’re clear—keep moving.” 

Clint navigates them along the side of the building to the garage, where he inputs a nine-digit security code. Natasha’s work is impeccable: the garage lifts with the barest of metallic creaks, and down they drive to the below-ground garage.

“We’re in,” Steve murmurs into his com. “Go.”

“Roger,” Thor says.

Steve glances around the garage. “There should be just one—”

He cuts off when a security guard comes rushing at the driver’s side window, hands held aloft. He’s built much like Thor; Pierce doesn’t employ security at his home full time, so when he needs it, he borrows from his casino.

Clint rolls his window down. “Hi there.”

“Good morning,” the guard says, frowning like it’s anything but. “Can I see your identification?”

Steve and Clint pass the man what he wants. “We’re here to clean Mr. Pierce’s art collection, swap out a few pieces,” Steve says while the guard is still glaring down at their ID.

“I don’t know anything about that,” the guard says.

Clint does an impressive imitation of someone trying not to roll their eyes. Maybe it’s real. “Well, how long have you worked here? Mr. Pierce schedules us to come by every time he’s out of town. I’m sure if you just check again—”

The guard’s eyes widen. He must be under strict instruction not to disturb Pierce unless the situation truly warrants his attention. “I’m afraid I can’t let you in,” he says.

Clint snorts derisively. “Your incompetence isn’t going to get in the way of me doing my job, pal. Give him a call if you’re so worried” —Clint glances at the guard’s name tag pointedly— “Security Agent Garver.”

“Give me a moment,” the guard says, and paces away from them.

“Yeah, we’re gonna start unloading,” Clint says. He swings the van into a free parking space and hops out, Steve following after him. They open the van’s back doors and start to unload the two dozen neatly wrapped canvases tucked into its cavity.

“You’re good at that,” Steve says.

“All bravado, baby,” Clint says, and winks.

A shrill ring echoes through the garage. The security guard curses.

“And that would be—”

“Thor,” Steve says. He reaches into the van for a towel. “Right on time.”

“Bless him.”

A second security guard bursts through a door, looking harried. He heads for the first one at a quick clip. They devolve into a stern discussion, with the first one pointing aggressively between the van and his phone.

“Well?” Clint asks, folding a towel over his shoulder.

“Might as well,” Steve says.

They cross the space of the garage, Clint calling out, “Something wrong, boys?”

The guards both turn to them with serious expressions. “You two need to leave,” says the second guard. He’s smaller than the first. Clint glances at Steve, who nods as imperceptibly as he can.

“Now, we’re just doing our jobs,” Clint says.

“You need to—”

The first guard doesn’t finish his sentence before Steve has slapped a towel soaked in chloroform over his face. He struggles and twists, but Steve’s clamps an arm around his midsection and holds him in place against his chest till the chemical compound starts to take effect. It doesn’t take long—soon the man is slumping in Steve’s arms, his body turning limp and heavy. Steve lets him slide all the way to the concrete floor, careful not to let him hit his head.

Clint isn’t so cautious. The second guard collapses in a heap, and his head thumps onto the concrete. Steve winces, already picturing the nasty bruise that’ll cause. “Whoops,” Clint says. “My bad!”

“Please don’t kill anybody,” Steve says. He squats and rolls his guard over to cuff him.

“Look, it’ll only help us if they don’t remember anything,” Clint says. He grabs his guard by the back of the hair and shoves a wad of fabric into his mouth before duck-taping it shut. His lack of compunction about it makes Steve wonder, again, exactly what Clint means when he says “real estate.” But they get the guards cuffed and gagged, then push them into sitting positions against the wall and out of the way.

“How we looking?” Steve says into his com.

“Clear,” Bucky says. “There were just the two, like Nat said.”

“And the security cameras are looping, so we’re you’re only witnesses,” Banner says. “Clint, did you mean to crack that guy’s head open?”

“He’s not even  _ bleeding.” _

Steve grabs Clint and pulls him back toward the van. “Come on, they’ll only stay out for so long.”

He and Clint grab a painting apiece and head for the door. The stairs up to the main floor are steep, and Steve has to remind Clint not to bang the frame against the railing, but they reach the door to the main floor. Steve fishes the keys out of his pocket, copied from Pierce’s wife’s own set. There’s no alarm system on the doors—just good, old-fashioned locks and keys. Pierce must believe he’s too intimidating a figure to ever be at any real risk.

They don’t waste any time in the immaculate foyer, instead hurrying up the central staircase. There’s art all over the house, of course—but Steve is headed for the heart of Pierce’s collection. He keeps his most valued pieces in the gallery proper, on the renovated third floor, a wide and well-lit space that funnels toward Pierce’s home office. Steve couldn’t be sure which pieces he still had hanging here, or where exactly any of them were, but he’d made his best assumptions.

They reach the third floor, and Clint whistles softly. “This is something.”

“Sure is,” Steve mutters, feet already carrying him across the room to the Chagall. It’s the one that had been featured in that  _ Times _ article, the one Pierce loved for its “whimsy.” To Steve, Pierce seemed incapable of  _ whimsy,  _ but he can’t deny the pure feeling of awe that overtakes him to be standing here in front of the original. Its colors are bright and evocative, the forms loose and almost playful, certainly dreamlike.

Steve could stare at it all day. 

They don’t have all day. He reaches down and unwraps the painting he’d brought up with him—a forgery as close to perfect as they come. He’d outdone himself with this one, really. He takes the Chagall from the wall and gently detaches it from the frame, wrapping it in the cloth once he’s done. The forgery goes into the frame and back on the wall. No one would ever be the wiser. They look just the same—only they aren’t, because Steve’s is fake.

He takes the real painting in hand and finds Clint already done with his, making a quick catalogue of what’s on the walls in here.

They double back to the van a dozen times, systematically replacing half the paintings in Pierce’s home gallery with forgeries. Steve had worked himself to the bone recreating as many as he could. They place all the real paintings in the van. The security guards don’t so much as twitch where they’re still slumped on the floor. North of the city, Thor has already sounded the alarm at the casino. The rest of Pierce’s security team will be too tied up dealing with a potential robbery to bother checking in at the residence every two hours like they’re supposed to. By the two hour mark, the casino was supposed to be on lockdown—no one in or out. A perfect distraction. 

Banner had dug into Pierce’s home security feeds and looped it with yesterday’s footage. The only evidence would be the two guards—and who would take the word of two men who’d never bothered to respond to the casino’s security alert? In all likelihood they would end up of out of a job. Necessary collateral damage, and a negligible amount of it.

Steve straightens the last painting, just up the hall from a thick set of double doors.

“You ready to get out of here?” Clint asks, thumbing toward the staircase.

Steve’s eyes linger on the door’s, a niggling feeling in the back of his brain. “Take this down,” Steve says, holding out a wrapped canvas to Clint. “I’ll be just a minute.”

“Alright, Chief,” Clint says.

Clint is gone by the time Steve reaches the door. He tries the ornate handle, but it catches and holds—locked, of course. He slips the small set of keys out of his pocket. These had been a remarkable fetch from Natasha, lifted from Pierce’s wife’s purse and returned before she had even made it to the dressings rooms at Bergdorf Goodman’s, thanks to a discreet scanner from Bruce. They probably would have been able to pull this off without them, but it had made it just that bit more untraceable.

The keys clink together quietly in his hand. Surely one of these…

“Rogers,” Bucky says into his ear.

Steve nearly jumps. He’d forgotten Bucky still had the actual camera feeds pulled up in the van, keeping an eye out for them—or on them, apparently.  “I just want to see,” Steve says. He tries a small silver key, but it doesn’t fit. It’s hard to tell which one might be right. The lock is cast bronze, but all the forged keys are made out of the same basic alloy. He’ll have to try all of them.

“What could you possibly want to see in there?” Bucky says.

“I won’t be long.”

“Get the hell out of that house.”

Another key catches but won’t turn. “Or what? You’ll call the cops on me?”

Steve pauses with his hand on the fifth key. This one had slid inside like it belonged, and sure enough, when he twitches his wrist, the lock clunks open.

“I’m in,” he says.

The silence over the line rings in Steve’s ear. He gives till the count of ten, then pushes inside.

Pierce’s office looks about the same as it did in the article’s photographs. A wide, mahogany desk dominates the center of the room, frame by two long-slung leather chairs and a wingback behind it. Bookshelves line the walls, something deliberately intellectual about the rows and rows of neat, leatherbound covers. 

Steve steps forward, lays a hand on the back of a leather chair. “Have you been in this room?” Steve asks.

“Yes,” Bucky grinds out.

Steve inhales deep, as if he might be able to catch a whiff of him, but there’s only the smell of orange-scented wood polish and a faint trace of pipe tobacco. “Do you know what I’m looking for?” he asks.

“I think—” Bucky breaks off. “A drawer on the left. Should be locked.”

“Can you still see me?”

“No. No cameras in the office.”

“Is anyone else listening to us right now?”

“No.”

“Do you know what’s in the drawer?”

“No. Files.” 

Steve circles the desk, his fingers dragging over its smooth surface. The polish is so flawless that he can see an approximation of his reflection in it. Breath going shallow, Steve crouches behind the high desk and assesses the drawers. There are half a dozen options, each one locked, each as likely as the last to hold whatever it is he’s after. He guesses the largest one on the bottom, and starts trying each of the smallest keys on the ring.

It takes three tries, then the lock clicks.

He slides the drawer open. Inside, there’s a thick stack of manila envelopes. Steve rifles through them; some seem brand new, while others are faded and frayed at the edges. He takes the top one out and opens it over his knees. The inside doesn’t make much sense at first. Paperclipped to the top is a mugshot of a man with ink-colored hair. Beneath that, there are pages upon pages of personal information about—well, it must be whoever’s in the picture, a man named Loki.

Steve gasps softly.

As the breath leaves his mouth, a shrill clanging sound starts up so loud it obliterates every thought in his head.

His knee bangs against the open drawer. “Shit!” he shouts, then: “Oh—oh, shit.”

“Rogers—Steve, where are you?” Clint is barely audible in his air. “We gotta go, buddy!”

“Steve,” Bucky says, irrefutable, “get out of there  _ now.” _

The alarm pulses like a frantic heartbeat. Lights flash somewhere outside the office—in the gallery or the stairwell. Steve is stuck, frozen, Loki’s file crumpling in his clenched fist. He can’t just—if he leaves this here—

The drawer is  _ full. _ He tosses Loki’s file on top of the desk and grabs the next one, tearing it open. The same deal. Social security number, bank accounts, birthdays, current and previous addresses—everything. Steve plunges his hands into the drawer, digging, flipping open covers, searching for one name in particular…

Clint’s still shouting in his ear. Other voices have joined in—Natasha, Bruce.

One is notably silent. When Steve finds what he’s looking for, he glances up at the ceiling, searching for camera.

“Get out,” Bucky growls. They’re making one-sided eye contact on a screen in the van, Steve is certain. “Just drop it, Steve, it’s not worth it—”

Steve’s gaze finds the photo clipped to inside of the manila folder. A grainy mugshot in black and white, no bigger than the size of Steve’s palm. He can’t remember if he’s ever seen this before—which means that he hasn’t, because he wouldn’t have forgotten. His finger finds the paper’s edge.

He can’t just leave this here. Pierce might have copies, might have other puppet strings to pull, but Steve can’t leave this file with the picture in a locked drawer in Pierce’s desk, in his house. He won’t—can’t—can’t even stomach the  _ thought _ of— 

But it’s not his choice to make.

Time is running out. Steve can’t hear much over the wailing alarms, but he’d bet that any minute police sirens will add to the din. He needs to get out of here.

His eyes find the ceiling again, and he holds up the file in one hand. He touches his com, holding it close in his ear, to be certain he can hear whatever comes down the line.

“Tell me to leave it,” Steve says, and waits.

He gives it to the count of five—that’s all the time he has left to give.

No reply. 

Steve scoops the entire stack of files out of the drawer, replacing Loki’s among the rest. Bucky’s file feels somehow heavier than the rest, though it’s the same thickness. Steve tucks it under an arm and shoves the drawer closed with his knee.

Then he gathers the rest of the stack against his chest and sprints for the door.


	12. Chapter 12

Clint has the van idling at the garage’s exit by the time Steve makes it down. Steve runs past the two guards still slumped heavily against the wall and throws himself through the open passenger door. The latch has barely clicked before Clint is peeling out of the garage, tires squealing against the concrete.

“Remind me,” Clint says, “that if Barnes doesn’t kill you, I’m going to.”

“Sorry,” Steve pants, still breathless. “I had to...”

He trails off, staring down at the pile of folders in his lap. The implications of what he’s done are only just beginning to settle in as his heart rate starts to slow. The last of the thundering adrenaline fades as apprehension creeps in. His fingers splay over Bucky’s file, and he wonders if he might have just fucked this up monumentally. The alarms, though they’re out of earshot and farther away with each second, still echo deep in his ears.

Clint’s hands are tight around the steering wheel. He can’t drive too fast or they’ll attract attention, but Steve can tell it’s killing him not to floor it.

“Clint, I’m sorry,” Steve says. “But I couldn’t just leave this all—”

“Can it,” Clint says, sharper than Steve is used to hearing him. “I don’t want to know. Probably doesn’t make much of a difference at this point, though.”

Steve sighs and tips his head back against the headrest. Some leader he is, going rogue like that. There’s not much he can say to make up for it, so he keeps quiet. Clint doesn’t seem to mind.

They reach the rendezvous point—some parking deck out in Queens—an hour later. Here they’ll shuffle around. Natasha and Clint will take this van out to one of Clint’s real estate holdings, where he’ll store the stolen paintings till Nat can sell them all at auction. It’ll be slow; they won’t see the full share of the money for another few months at least, but it’s safer that way. They had planned everything to be as safe as possible.

Steve climbs out the van to find Natasha already waiting by the other one, leaning against its side.

“We already dropped Bruce off in Manhattan,” she says, shrugging away from the van. “Since we’re making things up as we go along now.”

“Natasha—”

Her eyes cut to the files in Steve’s arms. He hasn’t let go of them once. “What have you got there?” she asks, and doesn’t wait for a response before she approaches and tears the top one out of his grip. She flips it open, raising an eyebrow. “Hm. Someone’s been naughty.”

“Give it back.”

“What do you plan on doing with all these?”

“I don’t know. Whatever Bucky wants to do.”

She studies his face carefully as she replaces Bucky’s file in his arms, then nods as if she’d confirmed something. “I’d guess those are Pierce’s only copies, but I’ll look into it for you. Let me know if you want help disposing of them.”

“Is he mad?” Steve gestures toward the van she’d come from. He can’t see Bucky inside from this angle, but he can feel his presence.

Natasha gives him a pitying look. “I hope your clothes are flame-retardant.”

She pats him on the shoulder as she slides past for the passenger door of Clint’s van. Steve turns to watch them go. Only when the taillights have disappeared around the corner does Steve turn and make for the other car.

The door is locked. Through the glass, Bucky stares him down, visibly grinding his teeth. Steve tries the handle again, but Bucky makes no move to unlock the door.

“Buck, come on,” Steve says. “Let me in.”

Bucky turns to look out the windshield, but the locks flip. Slowly, Steve clambers into the van. The engine cranks and revs as he gets the door shut.

“Bucky—” Steve starts.

“Do your seatbelt,” Bucky snaps.

Steve complies, and they drive out of the garage in stony silence. He’s just working up the nerve to try again when Bucky’s hand flashes out and turns the radio on. He fiddles with the dial till it lands on NPR, then cranks the volume on Fresh Air far above a reasonable level.

“Christ,” Steve mutters. He slaps the power button to turn it off.

Bucky turns it back on. “I was listening to that.”

They go back and forth three more times until Steve shouts, “Stop being such a _child!”_

“Oh, I’m the child?” Bucky leaves the radio off this time, thankfully.

“Yeah, you’re being a brat, avoiding the issue same as you always do.” They’re hurtling down the BQE—not the best place for this conversation, but Steve won’t sit here in silence for another hour till they’re home. Steve’s apartment. Wherever. “Stop trying to blast Terry Gross till my eardrums burst and just tell me what the damn problem is.”

“What’s the problem? What’s the _problem?”_

“Yeah, Bucky, what is the problem, because I distinctly remember asking you if you wanted me to leave these where I found them, and you didn’t say a thing.”

“What was I supposed to say?”

“Oh, I don’t know, how about ‘leave the files, Steve’?”

“And would you have?”

“Would I—why do you think I _asked?_ To be polite?”

Bucky’s grip on the wheel shifts, his knuckles paling. The van’s engine groans as they pick up speed, weaving between other much smaller vehicles.

“You would have told me no if you didn't want it,” Steve says. “Admit it. You wanted me to take them.”

 _“It,_ Rogers,” Bucky grinds out. “Singular. One file. Not the whole goddamn—did you take all of them?”

“Oh, be smart here. If I’d taken just yours, he would’ve found us out in half a second.” Steve slaps a hand against the top of the stack. “Now, it could’ve been any one of the people in here. You’re not the only one who was working for him against your will, right?”

“No.”

“Okay, well—needle in a haystack now, isn’t it?”

“You put the whole operation at risk.”

“I know I did,” Steve sighs. His apprehension still flutters moth-like in his chest, but faced with justifying himself to Bucky, he feels more and more confident about what he’s done. “This is what it was always about, though, right? Freeing you from Pierce.”

Bucky breathes hard through his nose and swerves toward an exit lane. He brakes too hard at the end of the off ramp, and the files nearly tumble out of Steve’s lap. Stopped at a red light, Bucky puts a hand to his temple and rubs too hard, pulling at thin skin.

“Do you really—” He cuts off, tries again. “I mean, this can’t work. He can find all of that out again. It’s not that easy.”

“Well, no, but… Don’t you feel better, knowing your whole life story isn’t locked away in his drawer?”

The light changes. Bucky eases forward into the streets of Brooklyn, his nostrils flaring.

“We’ll disappear for a while,” Steve says. “Long enough for him to forget about you. No offense, Buck, but surely you’re not so important to him that he’d hunt you down across the country.” Steve creaks a dry laugh, but he’s met with silence. “Bucky? Hey, look at me.”

Bucky chews his lip, but keeps his eyes on the road.

“Bucky,” Steve repeats. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Nothing again. “Dammit—cut it _out._ Don’t shut me out again, not after the progress we’ve made, after last night. Something’s wrong, Buck, you have to _tell me._ You don’t want me to fix it? Then tell me that too, fine, but you have to fucking talk to me or we’re right back where we were three months ago.”

The van shudders to a stop and this time, the files do slide from Steve’s lap and crash to the floorboard before he can catch them. Bucky throws the gear into park and cuts the engine. Steve glances out the window—Bucky’s pulled off onto a quiet side street—then back to Bucky, whose hands keep flexing around the steering wheel like he might snap it in half.

“Honey, what—”

Steve’s voice seems to set him off. Bucky buries his face in his hands and sags forward. His breath comes in ragged gasps, not quite like he’s crying—more like he’d been holding it for too long and now can’t seem to get enough air to his lungs.

“Bucky, sweetheart.” Steve reaches for him, settles a hand between his shoulder blades and rubs. “Talk to me, please.”

“You,” Bucky gasps. He shakes his hand and presses his hands more firmly to his face like he’s trying to hold himself together. “You scared the shit out of me, Steve.”

“I’m—”

“I was sitting in that van and the alarms start screaming and all I could do was just sit there and watch and hope to God you got out of there in time.” He rubs at his eyes then drops his hands, sitting up to look Steve in the face. “All I could think was how I suddenly understood how you must’ve felt when Nat called to tell you I’d been arrested. I thought I was—I thought to myself, the next time I see him he’s gonna be in handcuffs. You scared me to _death.”_

“I’m—I’m so sorry, Bucky.” Steve slides his hand to the back of Bucky’s neck, tangles his fingers in his hair, and holds tight. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, no, you _were_ thinking. You were thinking about me. I’m sorry for overreacting, it’s just…”

“I mean, to be fair, even if it was the right thing, that was pretty fucking stupid of me to do that. You weren’t really overreacting.”

Bucky croaks a watery laugh. “Christ. I love you.”

Steve’s heart leaps in his ribcage. His eyes widen, but when Bucky’s ears start to pink, Steve’s face melts into a soft smile. Bucky rolls his eyes at that but drags Steve to him, meeting in the middle for as close an embrace as they can manage over the center console.

“Of course I love you,” Bucky says. “I love you so much I don’t know how to handle it sometimes. But I’ll—I’m working on that. I promise.”

Steve cups the back of Bucky’s head and breathes against his neck, letting the deepest relief he’s ever felt crash over him in waves. They’re not out of the woods, not yet—in this or the job—but it feels so good to hear those words from Bucky again after so long without them.

“Do you, uh.” Bucky’s grip in Steve’s shirt slackens then tightens again. “You got anything you wanna say back, kid?”

“Oh,” Steve breathes, pulling back to smile crookedly at Bucky. He kisses him once, quick but firm. “I love you too, Buck.”

“Well, thank God for that,” Bucky mutters, even as he’s already drawing Steve in for another, slower kiss.

When they finally pull apart, much later than they ought to have, Steve says, “What should we do with them?”

“Burn them,” Bucky says. “Shred them and dump the bits in the river. I don’t care, just get rid of them.”

“We’ll need to move quick to get that done before the morning.”

“Yeah.” Bucky nods, smiling faintly, but then the pleased expression slips from his face. “Oh, God,” he groans. “The morning.”

“Do you—you don’t wanna go?”

“No, no, it’s just… All my shit’s at my parents’ place now. I need to go pick it up and tell them…”

“What’ll you tell them?”

“Well, I guess we’ll tell them the truth, mostly.”

Steve’s smile widens. “Which is …?”

Bucky thwaps him in the shoulder, but he’s smiling too. “That you and I are going away together for a little while, to work things out, get back on our feet.”

“God, your ma’s going to _dance.”_

“Yeah, hope you’re hungry, because she’ll probably sit us down for a five-course meal to celebrate.”

“You know I’m more than okay with that.”

“Yeah, me too,” Bucky says softly. He twists away to set his hand at the ignition, and as he cranks the engine to life, he adds, “Oh, and Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re never robbing anyone again.”

 

 

 

 

♠ ♦ ♣ ♥

♥ ♣ ♦ ♠

 

 

 

 

 

Steve and Bucky have been in Salt Lake City for three weeks when the first wire transfer from Natasha comes through.

The Chagall had sold for an easy $12 million at an auction house in St. Petersburg. All eight members of the team will receive $1.5 million over the course of the next few days, and—Steve could laugh. What the hell are they supposed to do with money like this?

“Live comfortably,” Bucky reminds him, stretched out on the couch with the midmorning sun spread across him like a blanket.

Salt Lake is a strange city, Steve thinks—very different from New York. It sits low on the flat ground at the base of the mountains, where it catches the light just perfectly. It’s too clean for Steve’s tastes, and the lake smells awful, but Clint had rented them a decent place to stay. Bucky loves to sit by the windows of the little house and watch the snow fall onto the white-capped mountains. The air out west seems to be doing him good. Steve hasn’t seen him this relaxed since… well, maybe ever. All his joints seem looser; he only tenses up when he and Steve make love, and even then, it’s only for the instant before he comes.

They’d stopped a few places along the way out west—Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Denver—but since arriving here, they haven’t felt the need to keep moving anymore. There’s been nothing on the news about a break-in at Pierce’s, and after the first time Pierce had tried to call Bucky, Bucky had chucked his phone out the window of the train somewhere in the Midwest. He hasn’t heard from him since. Pierce has certainly noticed his files are gone, but it could be years before he notices that 80 percent of his art collection is now comprised of forgeries.

Steve had thought that after all that, he might be tired of painting; might have gotten burnt out again. But to his surprise, he’s felt the opposite—maybe better than he ever has. He started on something original last week for the first time in a long time. Bucky had laughed at him when he’d seen the rough beginnings of his own face staring back at him from the canvas, but he’d taken Steve to bed that night and fucked him so slow and sweet that Steve knew how Bucky really felt about it without him having to say a word. Bucky might have the best poker face in the world, but he doesn’t bother using it around Steve anymore. Steve would see through it anyway.

He returned to his canvas in the morning, feeling inspired all over again. When Bucky had finally woken up, he’d made Steve break for pancakes before sprawling onto the couch. Ostensibly he’s there to read his book, but Steve feels his eyes on his back more often than not. He doesn’t mind.

“Oh,” Bucky says, sitting up. “Weren’t Thor and Loki supposed to be getting to Oslo today?”

“I think so,” Steve says, dabbing his brush on the palette. After Thor and Sam had wrapped things up at the casino—a false alarm, as it turned out—Thor had tracked down his brother and hauled him back home to Norway. Sam had taken his mom on a two-week Caribbean excursion, Stark had whisked Bruce away on the yacht to God knows where, and Clint had gone to Russia with Natasha. Steve and Bucky were the only ones who’d opted to stay stateside.

Bucky hums a contemplative note and lies back down.

Steve turns to him. “What? You wanna go to Norway?”

“No.” Bucky smiles. “I was just thinking, it might be nice to head home soon.”

Eyebrows raised, Steve sets his painting things aside to come sit on the edge of the coffee table. “You mean that?”

“We can’t keep running forever, Steve.”

“I know, but—”

“This has been nice.” Bucky sits up to take Steve’s hands. “But I’m not—I don’t want to run or hide anymore. I’m ready to come home.”

Steve scans his thumbs over the backs of Bucky’s hands, still a matched set though they don’t feel the same. The left has healed up nicely; Steve hardly notices him struggling with it anymore. “When you say come home…”

“I guess our old place is probably rented out to somebody else by now.”

Steve smiles, slow at first, then broader and broader. “I would guess, yeah, all these years later. And my apartment’s kind of cramped.”

“Well,” Bucky says, his eyes on the window. The corner of his mouth twitches, and he huffs, a startled half-laugh. He looks to Steve, and his face is full of unabashed hope. “I guess we’ll just have to find someplace new.”

“Doesn’t even have to be New York.”

This time Bucky laughs loud and vibrant, and Steve joins in easy as anything. Maybe Bucky’s laughing at what he’d said, but it’s true—they can go anywhere, do anything, be whoever they want to be. Their laughter fades, but as they look at each other, the feeling remains.

They’re free now. All bets are off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read, left kudos, or commented! If you enjoyed this story, please consider sharing the [masterpost](http://bride-ofquiet.tumblr.com/post/179282219193/when-the-chips-are-down-a-2018-captain-america-big) on tumblr to help other people find it. That post also includes links to the individual art posts, which you're encouraged to share too.
> 
> Here's some [outro music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84rArj4cySM) for you!


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